A Thousand Years, A Thousand More
by Giddy TF2
Summary: 'In retrospect, he should have realized what Fate had in store for him when Medic sneered at him and the sneer was the most dazzling thing he'd seen in a long time. A very long time.' A Heavy/Medic love story.
1. Chapter 1

_i. A thousand years, a thousand more,_

_ A thousand times a million doors to eternity_

It is the first time he spoke with Medic that Heavy remembers the clearest of their early days. The first time he _saw_ the doctor, they had seemed miles – no, _millennia _– apart, separated by a river of mercenaries in red, by the doctor's cold, indifferent glimpse at him and then away. Medic strode fast and assuredly towards the yawning entrance of their 2Fort base, head held high, shoulders squared, and before Heavy could greet Medic and introduce himself, the regal man was gone from view, white figure swallowed up by the shadows. A ghost. Untouchable and ephemeral, far from Heavy's extensive reach.

But the first time he spoke with Medic … yes, he remembers the infinitesimal details now, it had been in the dining hall. Engineer, a short, outgoing man with a velvety drawl, had cooked dinner that evening of their first night at 2Fort, a traditional Southern meal of pan-fried chicken, black-eyed peas, mashed potatoes and cornbread, and an inevitably rare tranquility reigned as the team devoured the delectable food.

The American Scout, Engineer and Soldier sat at one end of the long, rectangular table in the center of the hall, Scout flanked by the two helmet-donning men and utterly oblivious to said men not listening to his non-stop mumbling between bites. Sniper and Spy, Australian and French respectively, sat a little farther down the table, silent, facing each other though Sniper did not once look at the masked man. Spy, on the other hand, would give Sniper appraising glances now and then, eyes heavy-lidded, one eyebrow raised, lips curled around an ever-present, lit cigarette. Demoman, a Scottish black man, was sprawled on the floor behind Sniper, hugging a bottle of vicious liquid he'd told Heavy was called Scrumpy, dead to the world and snoring like a hog. Pyro, Heavy discovered after hearing munching noises from under the table, was eating their meal in the dark like a squirrel, plate held close to their partially masked face. Heavy had no clue what nationality or ethnicity Pyro was, or whether the mysterious pyrotechnician was a man or woman.

Medic sat alone at the other end of the table, back stiff, expression apathetic. The man plainly disliked human interaction. Medic, the last man on the team with whom Heavy had yet to chat.

Heavy was about to remedy that.

"I am heavy weapons guy," he said after sitting down next to Medic. "You are doktor, da?"

In retrospect, he should have realized what Fate had in store for him when Medic sneered at him and the sneer was the most dazzling thing he'd seen in a long time. A _very_ long time.

"I vould zhink zhat obvious," Medic said, and Medic's voice, not low but not shrill either – _just_ right – laved him like the hot springs of Kamchatka. How he _missed_ them, missed the sweeping, breathtaking vistas of his homeland. A world to which he could never return.

The sarcasm in Medic's tone didn't deter him from advancing the conversation any way he could. He had to hear more of Medic's voice. It didn't matter what or how Medic spoke, as long as Medic spoke to him.

"You are from Germany," Heavy deduced, digging into his slice of pan-fried chicken with a fork. "Which side you are from?"

Medic said nothing for a minute. He stared forwards at the nearest wall as he chewed slowly, seeming to ignore not just Heavy's question but Heavy's very presence. Just when Heavy was about to give up on receiving a reply, Medic said flatly, "I have no side. I left Germany after zhe var."

"Ah. I leave Russia during var." Without pause, Heavy added, "It vas that, or stay and die in Gulag."

Medic's piercing gaze abruptly honed on his face. Heavy returned it, noting the wideness of Medic's large blue eyes behind austere steel spectacles, the shock in them that Medic concealed a bit too late.

"You vere sent to zhe Gulag during zhe var?"

The question was murmured so quietly that Heavy almost missed it.

Heavy nodded, then said, "I vould be in Gulag now if I did not escape."

_I would be dead decades ago, beaten to a bloody, unrecognizable mess for daring to make love to another man._

But Heavy didn't say this aloud. It was tempting, but he didn't. Who knew what the German doctor thought about homosexuality? About homosexuals? About homosexuals who looked and behaved like _him_?

He knew his gigantic, muscular physique and aggressive, confident personality didn't correspond with the stereotypical perception of homosexuals. His appearance was the _last_ thing people would think of when asked to describe a homosexual man. Before the days of Stalin, before his true sexuality was exposed by vindictive rivals jealous of his weapons-constructing skills and the Gulag in the Karaganda Oblast in Kazakh SSR was to be his final destination, everywhere he went people assumed that he hated homosexuals. That he mocked them, beat them. _Killed_ them.

The nightmarish memories of _opushchennye_ prisoners being raped by other prisoners and prison staff, of keeping at bay the same perpetrators till exhaustion throughout the three months he was in the Gulag still hounded him in his sleep. Executing those men with his bare hands had done nothing to abate the horror for months, _years_ afterwards.

Medic's next question surprised him.

"How did you escape?"

Heavy blinked. Medic was _interested_ to know that?

Well, who was he to deny the doctor?

"I vas – _am_," Heavy corrected himself, "good weapons maker. Higher up people treat me little better vhen I make weapon plans for them but they did not trust me enough to be in vorkshop. One soldier vas friendly to me. He vas not like other soldiers there. He did not believe I am –" Heavy pursed his lips, stopping himself in time from leaking his secret. That was _close_. "He respect my skill. We become friends and he help me get things I need to escape. He thought he vas helping innocent comrade." He paused, frowning and glancing at his plate of food. "He must be dead now."

"Vhat happened vhen you got out?"

Heavy trained his gaze once more on Medic's face. Ah, it seemed Medic was _very_ interested to know this portion of his life. How fortunate for him that he so quickly came upon an icebreaker for dialogue between them.

"Camp vas in place called Spassk in Kazakh SSR," he replied after swallowing some mashed potatoes and another piece of chicken. "On truck ride to camp from Russia, I put in memory vhere Dolinka Village vas, vhen truck stop there for prisoners to record name. It vas headquarters for camp system in country. Thirty-five kilometers from camp. Soldiers chase me all the vay on foot vith guard dogs. It vas summer, but still much snow and very cold."

"Vhat happened next?"

Heavy took his time to phrase his answer. In such a short time of acquaintance, there was no way to ascertain what sort of man Medic was, how Medic would react to what he'd done that fateful night in Dolinka Village. In the aftermath of his violent rampage, so much blood had been spilled that the streets ran red from one side of the village to the other and the snow surrounding it was frozen crimson and littered with wrecked corpses. He'd only slayed the guilty and the dogs. He had not touched a single innocent person who lived in the village, who was not associated with the Gulag.

There were very few of them.

He never regretted his actions.

Heavy looked Medic in the eye and said, "I killed them all. The dogs. The soldiers who chase me, and soldiers in village. People who vork for Gulag and turn eye avay from suffering. One by one. The leaders, I save for last."

He expected Medic to flinch, or at the very least show revulsion. Instead, Medic leaned forward, enthralled by his narrative, eyes ever wider with a glint that was an amalgam of delight and mania. Heavy should have been unnerved by it, but he wasn't. At all.

In fact, he _liked_ it.

"Vhat did you do to them?" Medic murmured. If Heavy hadn't known better, if he'd heard the question with his eyes shut, he would have thought Medic was … _aroused_.

He liked that even more.

"I …"

_I crushed their arms and their legs. Smashed their skulls. Broke their necks. Ripped their heads off and their hearts out while they still thundered. Tore off their raping chlen and their yaichki and made them eat them raw before they drowned in their own blood. And I enjoyed every moment of vengeance for their transgressions against other children of the Motherland._

"Ja?" Medic said, voice huskier, and Heavy said, "I crush and break many legs and arms and necks so they could not run avay. Some I killed vith one punch vhen they shoot at me. Some I tear heads off and tear open chests to show them their dead hearts. And others …" Heavy's eyes narrowed as a fetid memory surfaced for an instant, of one of the camp wardens – the worst of the rapists of the _opushchennye_ – staring inanely at his own twitching heart and removed genitals before dying. "Others, I hurt for long, _long_ time before I give them mercy of death."

This time, Medic did move back, though it was with an unmistakable sound of approval and a blatant glance at Heavy's hands on the table.

"I see. Vhat did you do after _zhat_?"

"I tell you after I eat more."

Heavy consumed the remainder of his pan-fried chicken and mashed potatoes, and Medic did the same of his own meal, waiting patiently for the continuation of Heavy's account. It was peculiar to Heavy how _easy_ it was to talk to Medic about such a sinister period of his past. He'd only laid eyes on the man in the morning and spoken to him for _minutes_. With any other man, any other _human being_ in the world, he would never have revealed he'd been in the Gulag, much less that he'd killed numerous men – who certainly deserved it – and guard dogs – which he had no choice unless he wished his throat torn open by them – with zero remorse.

But Medic, he was learning, was not like most men.

Medic was, for one thing, the first person in twenty-five years to not quail one bit in his intimidating presence. The last men who didn't either were armored soldiers equipped with loaded rifles all pointed at his head, standing at least six meters away from and around him. Even then, some of them visibly quavered when all he did was stand tall, scowling at them with his teeth bared, fists clenched and nostrils flaring. He was a terrifying force of nature on two legs in his prime, an admired and feared boxing champion with profound intelligence that amazed anyone who got to know him.

He still was that force of strength and intellect. Perhaps even more so with his gained experiences and maturity. It was, to begin with, the reason RED hired him.

And Medic did not fear him.

It was refreshing to converse with someone who gazed upon him and did not see a monster.

"After Dolinka Village, I travel south, through far west China. Very few villages there. Then into Tibet. In Lhasa, I become friend vith American soldier who vas there to meet …" He struggled for a second with the name. "Dalai Lama. American soldier vas lieutenant vith other soldiers on tour of Asia. He listen to story of escape from Spassk. I also fix and service weapons for him. He help me get out of Tibet and come here to America to vork for American army."

"You must have spent months travelling to Tibet from Kazakh SSR, even vith automobiles."

"Da. Often I valk. My size …" Heavy gestured at himself, smiling self-effacingly. "I scare people."

His smile widened at Medic's smirk. It was one of amusement, not towards him but towards his trifling joke. It was even more dazzling than the sneer, and he engraved it on his mind for future reference, gratified to get a response like that so soon. What would Medic's genuine smile look like? Would he be able to behold it without being robbed of his breath?

"You have very … large hands."

Medic was staring at them, as if they were an intriguing, extraordinary species of creature that no one in the world had seen before. If it had been anyone else, anyone other than Medic, Heavy would have bristled and growled in annoyance at such unashamed gawking at his hands. But Medic …

Heavy grabbed the opportunity to scrutinize Medic's countenance, letting his eyes roam from meticulously styled, thick black hair with salt-and-pepper sideburns to shapely eyebrows, to big blue eyes and their fine eyelashes, down a spectacles-perched, patrician nose that Heavy itched to tap on its tip, then down to thin yet expressive lips now curved slightly at their corners. Medic's jawline was firm and angular, his neck long, his ears well-formed and proportionate to the rest of his features. Medic's face was handsome, one of the most handsome Heavy had seen in his life.

Medic was … truly not like any other man.

Heavy mentally patted himself on the left side of his chest.

_Sshh. Be calm, beating heart_.

Heavy cleared his throat, then said with what he hoped was a steady voice, "Is true I have large hands." Heavy lifted and bent his arms and hands to his chest, an old and familiar movement. "I vas champion boxer in Universitét Lomonósova for three years."

_Until the NKVD ublyudki took me and my freedom away._

But this, too, Heavy didn't say aloud. Medic might become a _little_ too curious about why he was sent to the Gulag. That would not do.

"Zhe state univerzity of Moscow," Medic murmurs, his blue eyes upon Heavy's face again, and oh, Heavy had to be imagining the impressed gleam in them. Medic must have studied in a university – or more than one – and successfully completed his course to become a doctor. Very likely in a prestigious medical university in Germany. Very likely an accomplished doctor respected by his peers here in America and in Germany, to be hired by RED. What was a hijacked, unfinished education for a five-year engineering course in the MGU and a humiliating public fall from grace into the Gulag compared to all that?

"That is right." Heavy angled his head and said, "Vhere did Doktor study? You must have finish medical school to be doktor."

Immediately, Medic's expression became shuttered and icy, causing Heavy to regret the inquiry, to be puzzled. Was Medic displeased that he asked a personal question? Or was it that Medic was sensitive about discussing any aspect of his job?

No man who was held in high esteem for his work would be reluctant to crow about it.

Unless, of course, he was _not_ held in high esteem.

Heavy sat up straighter in light of the revelation. As skeptical as he was of it, it wasn't an impossibility, seeing as he knew next to nothing about Medic. For all that he _did_ know so far, Medic being an accomplished, respected doctor was as equally conceivable as Medic being a discredited, reviled one.

Everyone had their grim stories, their sins, if they really lived. Everyone had their secrets.

"Zhe University of Heidelberg. I studied zhere in zheir Faculty of Medicine."

Heavy stayed quiet. So he was right. Medic did study in a prestigious medical university, in the oldest and most prestigious one of them all in Germany. Even in Moscow in the late '30s, he had heard of the university's excellent reputation for their natural and life science programs. It was a reprehensible stain on its history, however, that it supported the Nazi regime during the war, to the point it became a school for the Nazi Party and actively involved itself in Nazi eugenics –

Going rigid in his seat, Heavy peered furtively at Medic's profile as Medic poked the cornbread on his plate with his fork, back stiffer than ever. Could it be that Medic had been a member of the Nazi Party? Was that the reason for Medic's sudden retreat to standoffishness upon hearing his question? Was _that_ Medic's secret?

In his leather boots, Heavy's toes curled, feet and calves tensing in primal, instinctive preparation for a fight. B'lyad, he _hated_ the Nazis, hated them just as much as Stalin and his NKVD sukiny deti. He'd hated them long before the war, long before the Battles of Khalkhin Gol and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that he _knew_ that crazy mu'dak Hitler wouldn't hesitate to break once the invasion of Poland – a conquest he'd vehemently disagreed with – was complete. Twenty-seven years on, he was still flabbergasted that Stalin had considered _and_ had Molotov sign the treaty. Did they not read Hitler's Mein Kampf? Did they not _see_ in its vile contents Hitler's hostile plans to invade and enslave the Slavic lands, that the Motherland was simply a means to an end until she lost her usefulness to the racist tyrant?

He'd torn apart the abridged English copy of the book he was lent by a university peer who often traveled to Germany. Torn it and flung the shreds into the lit fireplace of his tiny apartment in Moscow in February of 1941, mere months before Germany invaded his country and captured and slaughtered millions of his people. Those months were his most fervent and dedicated to his weapons-construction work, with him toiling tirelessly night after night in his apartment, drawing blueprint after blueprint of a variety of firearms that he burned to embers in the same fireplace when the NKVD arrested him for an entirely different reason two years later.

Sasha, his beloved Minigun, was born in his mind and heart on the day of that arrest, along with his entrenched loathing of ruthless dictators and their cronies.

After arriving and settling in America – as best a Russian defector could in a country that abominated communism and anything and anyone associated with it – Sasha was the first weapon he built on US soil. The US military had been awestruck by it and swiftly manufactured smaller, more cost-effective types of it that were used in Operation Overlord in 1944, and Heavy had reveled in every report of Nazis decimated by the tens of thousands by his guns. It didn't matter to him that he was never credited for them. What mattered was that he had a direct hand in felling Nazi scum who had harmed his people and his homeland. If the US military had allowed him then, he would have gladly rejoined the war just to fire Sasha at the Nazis till they were all dead.

Yes, he still hated the Nazis, and the notion of Medic being one was … unthinkable. Unbearable.

Heavy deliberately relaxed his legs and feet. No. No, his gut instincts were screaming at him that Medic wasn't a Nazi. There was something … _odd_ about Medic's captivation with his execution of the Gulag soldiers and wardens. If Medic was a Nazi, would he not have related to the Gulag soldiers and wardens instead? If Medic was a Nazi, would he not have relished the suffering of the prisoners instead? Relished _his_ suffering?

There was one surefire way to find out.

"University of Heidelberg? I know it. Is good university. Exist since 1300s, many hundred years before Universitét Lomonósova. But … it vas Nazi school during var. You said you leave Germany _after_ the var, da?"

Medic's fork screeched across a mostly empty plate. The noise was jarring, irritating to the ears. Heavy grimaced, then glanced at Medic's gloved, right hand grasping the fork. Medic was holding the fork in an unusual fashion, upright inside a fist with its tines scratching the greasy surface of the plate, as if he was wielding the fork like a … weapon. Like a _dagger_.

"Nazi blood runs red like any ozher," Medic rasped. Medic's eyes were wide until the whites were visible around the irises, aimed at the wall. Blind to the present. Seeing something in the past that Heavy couldn't.

Heavy's similarly blue eyes taped to slits. What did the doctor mean? That Nazis were only human? That they were just like anybody else?

Heavy's gaze flitted to Medic's ashen face, at the stark expression it depicted, then down to Medic's taut hand, then up to Medic's face again. It was there and then that Heavy identified Medic's expression, identified and _empathized_ with it so acutely. He had worn that very mien for many years after he escaped from Kazakh SSR, worn it every time he recalled the NKVD, the Gulag and Dolinka Village. No, he was convinced now, Medic was _not_ a Nazi. Medic had meant what he said _literally_.

Medic had _seen_ Nazi blood flow. Perhaps Medic had _shed_ it.

Perhaps, he and Medic had more in common than he ever expected.

"Doktor –"

"Ich _hasse_ sie. Ich wünschte ich könnte sie alle töten!"

Heavy didn't understand the harshly whispered German words, but the fury in them, _that_ he understood all too well. He raised his left hand and reached for Medic's right hand, staring at Medic's features, his broad chest tight with understanding.

"Doktor … you also –"

"UURRR AARRR BRRAFFF MUUHHNNN."

Heavy and Medic recoiled in unison at Pyro popping out from underneath the table between them, turning their head from side to side to gaze first at Heavy, then at Medic and then back at Heavy. Pyro's black gas mask obscured their whole face. Its eye sockets were circular and opaque, reminding Heavy of a grasshopper's eyes. Heavy was stumped by Pyro's garbled mumbling. Medic's expression was stoic and unreadable once more.

"Vhat did leetle Pyro say? I do not understand."

"AAHHH SUUHHH UURRR AARRR BRRAFFF MUUHHNNN," Pyro mumbled again, then slipped back under the table as hastily as they appeared.

Heavy still didn't understand what Pyro said. As he scratched the side of his head and frowned to himself, engrossed with deciphering Pyro's remarks, Medic jumped to his feet, causing Heavy to recoil a second time.

"I am not hungry anymore," Medic said with a monotonous tone, not looking at Heavy.

"Oh."

Heavy promptly felt stupid about his frivolous reply. He wracked his brain for something wittier, something that would make Medic want to speak to him again –

"Einen guten Abend, Herr Heavy."

Oh, Medic was pushing his chair back, turning away –

"Doktor!"

Medic swiveled around to face him and he stood up, gaining the advantage of height over the doctor by a couple of inches. Heavy couldn't help feeling pleased that Medic remained where he stood, head tipped back to mirror his gaze without a blink or cringe. Medic had the perfect height for him to kiss on the mouth. All he had to do was lean down and tilt his head to one side, press his lips to Medic's, and he would demonstrate to the handsome, multi-faceted man all the ways of making love to a man in which he was well-versed and _oh_, there were _many_.

But they were not alone.

And he was a homosexual while Medic … was very likely not.

"I am happy ve talk. I hope to again," he murmured, his small smile a wistful one. "Have good night, Doktor. See you at battlements in the morning."

Medic stared at his visage for what felt like a century, expression frustratingly inscrutable as ever. Then, softly, Medic said, "Ja, I did say I left Germany after zhe var. I … left zhe univerzity shortly after it became a Nazi univerzity. I vould have left Germany earlier if I could."

Before Heavy could reply, Medic sauntered away towards the doors of the dining hall, and Heavy watched him go, something in his chest aching in a manner he hadn't felt in decades. He decided not to think too much about it for now, and sat back down and resumed eating his dinner and deciphering Pyro's comments. It was as he swallowed the last bite of cornbread that he succeeded.

"Vhy vould you call me 'brave man'?" he mumbled to himself. "Unless …"

Face slack and eyes wide with insight, Heavy leaned sideways to peek under the table, searching for the pyrotechnician.

"Leetle Pyro, you vere in Gulag too?"

He was met with silence. Pyro was gone.

Heavy sat upright, grunted once and shrugged his shoulders. If he couldn't talk with Pyro tonight, there was always tomorrow. He smiled to himself as he collected his and Medic's plates and utensils and brought them to the kitchen to wash them in the sink.

Yes, there was always tomorrow to talk with the fascinating enigma that was his Medic, too.


	2. Chapter 2

_ii. I may have lived a thousand lives, a thousand times_

_An endless turning stairway climbs_

_To a tower of souls_

If the first time he spoke to Medic is the clearest memory Heavy has of their early days, the clearest memory he has of the days following them is of a slim, towering building tucked away in a corner behind 2Fort, behind a garage that doubled as the team's storage room. To be more specific, the memory is of lounging on the building's girded, wooden balcony that overlooked the base, an ideal location for bouts of solitude, undisturbed introspection and a contemplation of the stars.

It was a refuge a loner like his teammate Sniper would appreciate. It was far away from the living quarters, minimizing the chance of the other RED members intruding on him, and the view from the balcony ensured that he could see anyone approaching the building long before they saw him. That is, if he was on the constant lookout for gatecrashers. Mostly, like tonight, his eyes were pointed up through binoculars at the New Mexico desert night sky, brilliant and humbling with its iridescent and eternal stars, planets, nebulas and galaxies like the Magellanic Clouds, the Great Nebula south of Orion's Belt, and his favorite, the spiral, purple-and-orange Andromeda Galaxy two-and-a-half million light years away from Earth.

It was also the safest place to indulge in one of his most hush-hush pastimes: Singing English songs from the '20s onwards.

Music-wise, he was particularly fond of jazz, of the piano oeuvres of Art Tatum and Thelonious Monk, of John Coltrane's cool saxophone mastery, of Miles Davis' and Duke Ellington's pioneering styles, Lady Day's resonant, personal vocals and Satchmo's virtuoso trumpet playing and scat singing. But most of all, he adored the soft baritone of Nat King Cole, and he owed it all to Johnny Berry, a Specialist in the US military he'd befriended at the end of 1943. Johnny was older than he was at the time, and physically as dissimilar from him as a man could get: Lanky, sinewy, long-limbed, with a head of curly, black hair and large brown eyes that twinkled with mischief and optimism.

Johnny was also a black man in a racially segregated institution that had permitted African-American men to only be in all-black units and strictly forbade them from commanding white men until 1940. Johnny was still considered a lesser being by his white counterparts, to be _beneath_ them, and Heavy sympathized with his new comrade. He, of all people, knew how it felt to be ostracized simply for being who and what he was.

He being a hulking Soviet defector and Johnny being a skinny African-American G.I., they made a rather conspicuous pair at Fort Belvoir in Fairfax County, Virginia. The attention on Heavy intensified when he was slotted into the Engineer Replacement Training Center's specialized courses for weapons operations as an instructor regardless of his mediocre English in late 1944, after his completion of Sasha and modified versions of Sasha were being used in the war. _You're a prodigy_, the higher-ups had told him, _your knowledge should be shared with our engineers and no, as much as we value your enthusiasm to fight the Krauts, you can't rejoin the war, we can't afford for you to be bagged by the Axis or the Soviet Union again_.

Despite that, many of the draftees did _not_ like him.

"He's a _communist_," he had heard one of them whisper to another outside the classroom one day, the same way one would say, "He's a monstrous killer and eater of children."

He'd sighed to himself, a twenty-two-year-old man who felt older than a hundred, and brushed the erroneous opinion out of his mind and left it at that. Johnny, who was there to accompany him back to his lodging on campus, didn't.

"Oh yeah?" Johnny said, storming up to the two white men in uniform, glowering at them. "You ever bother _asking_ him if he is? Or you just pulling that outta your _ignorant_ ass 'cause you don't know better than to _judge_ somebody?"

Johnny almost got his teeth knocked out for that. He would definitely have knocked out _their_ teeth if Heavy hadn't intervened before more punches were thrown by wordlessly stepping in front of Johnny and shaking his head once.

_No, tovarisch, you are better than them. Don't sink to their level._

The two draftees had bolted the minute Heavy stepped in, and Johnny's outrage seeped away beneath his imperturbable, chastening gaze.

"Sorry, buddy," Johnny said to him later as they exited the ERTC into the chill of an early Virginian winter and headed for the housing zone next to the center where Heavy's wood-frame apartment building was. "Flipped my wig, there."

"Is fine, Curly."

Johnny smiled at the affectionate moniker, then said, "I gotta admit, Chrome-Dome, sometimes I'm curious myself."

Heavy smiled at Johnny's tongue-in-cheek moniker for him. The first time he heard it, he and Johnny were casual acquaintances who knew nothing of each other beyond their names and statuses at the fort. When Johnny blurted out the slang at him, he'd asked for its definition and seen the terror in Johnny's eyes, terror that he would hit the shorter, scrawnier man with his gargantuan fists.

On the contrary, once Johnny nervously explained what Chrome-Dome meant while gesticulating at his more or less bald head, he'd chortled with amusement and playfully smacked Johnny on the shoulder. When Johnny realized he wasn't going to die that day, he'd laughed along with Heavy, laughed and laughed until there were tears in their eyes and thus, a beautiful friendship was born.

"Curious if I am communist?"

"Yeah. It don't matter to me though. I'm just curious. The Soviet Union says it's communist, so …"

"Da. Let me think."

Heavy pressed his lips together as he concentrated on choosing the most apt words and phrasing he could come up with for his answer. The question, though stated with a casual tone, was of great consequence. He had lived here at Fort Belvoir for a year and yet, he was avoided and given the stink eye by most people outside of classes. Some would mutter slurs about his ethnicity under their breath when they thought he couldn't hear or comprehend it. Even in the classroom, sometimes some of the draftees would scowl palpably at him, like they could make him drop dead if they stared long enough. As for the administration, he knew their true concern was solely for his knowledge and experience with weapons engineering. If they had some method of extracting it out of his head, he knew they would have done it and tossed the rest of him back to the Soviet Union without a pang of conscience.

None of them gave a damn about the man behind the nationality, the accent, the assumed political stance. All they saw was that someone, _something_ was different from them and was therefore a menace and had to be dominated. _Purged_.

Sometimes, America wasn't all that different from Stalin's Russia.

"In Stalin's vorld, you vorship Stalin, or you are dead. Communist, socialist, capitalist, all is second to him," Heavy eventually said as they ambled past leafless cedar trees laden with yesterday's snow. "I never put label on me. Vhat alvays matter to me is people are safe and happy. Have food, home, school to study. Have life to live dream. Life to share vith family and friends. Help each other vhen there is trouble. That mean I am communist?"

Though his breath fogged in the air, Johnny's gaze was as warm as sunshine.

"No, my large friend. Means you're a decent human being."

Heavy smiled back, a forlorn smile.

_You would not say that,_ _tovarishch, if you knew what these hands of mine had committed, and that my heart is unrepentant of any of it._

"Labels are stupid," he said instead, and Johnny snorted and said, "Heh. Yeah, they are."

Johnny's reply was not a facetious one. Heavy knew that Johnny dealt with the same discrimination, maybe even more. On top of racist insults, he'd heard other kinds hurled at Johnny since they befriended each other: Commie-lover. Pinko. Russki-loving faggot.

The third one had angered him terribly. He'd never heard of the last word until he came to America, but in Russia, there were numerous words akin to it and he had all of them yelled to his face with undisguised abhorrence in the Gulag. So even here in America, homosexual people were despised.

Even here, he could not be free to be who and what he really was.

Johnny halted in his tracks when Heavy pressed the palms of his hands to his face and let out a growl of weariness. It echoed down the lane and between the apartment buildings, a lonely, doleful sound.

"Buddy? You all right?"

"I am sorry." Heavy inhaled deeply, then let his hands fall away and faced his concerned friend. "Vish I could say better vhat in brain."

"No need to apologize for that. We all get stuck sorting out our thoughts and feelings now and then. For somebody who learned English on his own, you speak it pretty good already." Johnny snapped his fingers with a lively tempo, doing a little dance at the same time. "You got your own sense of _eloquence_, man. Your own sense of _rhythm_ and _style_."

Heavy smiled, eyes crinkling.

"Like music."

"Yeah! Exactly. Like music." Johnny suddenly straightened up and snapped his right thumb and forefinger once, louder, his eyes glazed as inspiration struck. "_Yeah_ … like _music_."

"Curly?"

"We'll make a stop at the barracks first, okay?"

Johnny took hold of his right forearm and led him in the opposite direction towards the fort's unaccompanied personnel housing facility where the troops resided. There were six imposing buildings, each with almost a hundred rooms and a laundry room, conveniently near the fort's other facilities like the commissary, theater, fitness centers and chapel. Johnny's room was in the fifth one, and he and Heavy strolled languorously to it, enjoying the somewhat frosty, invigorating air and each other's company. In the distance, Heavy could hear the muted shouts of soldiers training in the new obstacle course at the ERTC.

"Music's the key!"

"Key to vhat?"

"To helping you learn English faster!" Johnny said, pleased with himself. "Yeah, and it's a _fun _way of doing it too. It's a lot easier to memorize a _tune_, see? You remember the tune, you'll remember the words better too."

Heavy nodded.

"Is good idea."

Johnny's room was on the third floor. It was, by American standards, a small room, with a single bed, a bedside table with a lamp on top, a wooden writing desk and stool, a cupboard with drawers and a curtained window facing some trees and another building. In Russia, an entire family could live in it. The bed creaked ominously when Heavy sat on its side, and Heavy chuckled when Johnny said with a mock expression of alarm, "Don't you go and break my bed now!"

Johnny was entertaining to be around. Johnny treated him like a human being.

He observed the African-American man rummage around in the cupboard's drawers, hands on lap. In the serenity of the moment, Johnny's inquiry was all the more unforeseen to him.

"Since we're talking about you …" Johnny's back was facing him, head bowed as the man carried on his search. "Some of the guys were saying that you, _uh_, that you escaped from a death camp in Russia all by yourself. Walked all the way to Tibet from there. That true?"

Heavy's eyes flickered down at his hands. In the sunlight streaming through the window, spotless and motionless, they were like any other pair of hands. Hands that could operate delicate tools and mold even more delicate components. Hands that could cook sophisticated meals, that could grasp and flip the pages of Russian and English literature as their possessor's eyes perused them during halcyon autumn and winter nights. Hands that nobody would have guessed had crushed human heads to a pulp between them, yanked out spines and ripped off genitals in a paroxysm of madness.

Heavy still had abysmal nightmares about Spassk and Dolinka Village.

He would probably endure them for the rest of his life.

Staring down at his hands, Heavy said, "Camp vas in Kazakh SSR. Next to Russia. Part of Soviet Union. Had help getting out of camp, but rest of vay, vas just me. Soldiers and dogs chase me to camp headquarters in country. I fight them alone there. I … killed many. I keep running. China friend vith Russia, so had to be careful all the vay. Sometimes had car ride, but very few because people scared of me." Heavy fell silent for a while, then murmured, "But da, is true."

He tensed, prepared for words of pity from Johnny who was kneeling on the floor, or repulsion. Or both.

Heavy received neither.

"Damn. You are really something, you know that?"

Heavy glanced sharply at Johnny, lips parted with surprise. What he saw in Johnny's eyes, it was … _respect_.

"I can't even _begin_ to imagine what I would have done in your shoes. A Soviet _death camp_?" Johnny shook his head and sighed. "Most Americans your age, if they weren't drafted in the army, their biggest worry's where to go for a nice dinner, or whether to go to the movies or not. What they're gonna do after college, or whether they're gonna marry their sweetheart and settle down in a nice town, you know? And then there's _you_. You just turned _twenty-one_ last year. Just turned into a man, and you've already seen and gone through more hell than any person deserves to."

Heavy gazed downwards at his hands again even as his chest swelled. Johnny still saw him as a decent person. Johnny was still his friend.

"Nyet." Heavy raised his head and smiled at the other man, poking his own chest with one thumb. "I be man long before."

Johnny grinned, the respect in his brown eyes no less than before.

"That you did. That you did." Johnny plucked something out of the top drawer and then sat next to him on the bed. "Here, I wanna show you something."

It was a small, rectangular photograph in black and white, a portrait of a young woman attired in a square-shouldered jacket and a high-collared shirt with ruffles, her long, black hair tied up in a bun on her head. She had a charming smile and straight, white teeth, a wide and attractive nose and kind, soulful eyes, just like Johnny's.

"That's Mary-Louise. She's my girl in Baltimore."

Heavy deftly gripped the photograph with his thumbs and forefingers, his expression mellow as he looked at it. So this was Johnny's love of his life. He could tell just from the photograph that she was a good person who took care of herself, that she was someone who loved Johnny very much, to smile like that for a picture for him.

"She is pretty."

"Yeah, she is." Heavy could hear the pride and joy in Johnny's voice. "We're thinking of getting married when the war's over. Buy ourselves a home in the suburbs. Have two kids, maybe more, when we can afford it."

Heavy's expression tinged with melancholy. Johnny was a very lucky man, to have someone to love, to be loved by that someone. Very lucky to be able to express that love at liberty, to celebrate it with others without the dread of being arrested, shamed and detested. Would he ever find a love like that here in America? Find someone who would accept him as he is, _all_ of him?

So many Americans he'd met up to now could not even see past his origin. Who in this country would understand the ghastliness he had to witness, to undergo during the war and in the Gulag? Who would understand the darkness in him that that ghastliness had planted, that was still there, even now?

Who would understand, who was also homosexual like him?

No, love was not meant for one such as him.

"You got a girl back in Russia?"

Johnny was nudging his side with an elbow, smiling at him. He managed to dredge up a believable smile in reaction as his thoughts became more dejected.

_Had men. Men who were too afraid of loving other men in a world that shot them in the head and threw their corpses into mass graves for it._

"Nyet," Heavy mumbled, shaking his head. "Nobody."

It was the truth, but his chest didn't ache any less.

Johnny put an arm around his torso and gave him a shake – as much as the lanky man could of his massive frame – of encouragement.

"Hey, you're not _giving up_ already, are you? You're at the _prime_ of your life here!" Johnny poked him in the chest with a forefinger and waggled his eyebrows. "And you know what, I bet that somewhere out there in this great, big country, there's a _good_ American girl who's gonna fall in love one day with a certain _big_ _Russian bear_ I know!"

Heavy chortled with Johnny, infected by the other man's boisterous laughter. Although he knew from the age of nine that he was homosexual, he'd had a number of sexual experiences with women in Russia. On all occasions, he was able to achieve orgasm by masturbation after penetrative sex and satiate his female partners … but there was always something missing, something that all the sex he had with women couldn't bestow him.

If he had no other choice, none at all, he _could_ envision himself being married to a woman and being sexually active with her. If, by sexually active, it was sex once every year or so.

Chyort, he might as well marry his right hand.

"Da. Who can say," Heavy said once the laughter dissipated, handing the photograph of Mary-Louise back to Johnny.

"See! That's the spirit!"

Johnny slapped him good-naturedly on the upper back, transforming Heavy's smile into a more sincere one. When the world was gloomy, Johnny made it a brighter place. He was very lucky to have a comrade like Johnny.

A few minutes later, Johnny said, "I like talking to you, you know? Everyone else, all they talk about is how much they're looking forward to being in the war. To killing as much of the enemy as they can. Like it's _normal_ to kill another man just 'cause you were told to, like it's something you oughta be _proud_ of." He stroked Mary-Louise's face in the picture with his thumb as he stared at it, a solemn expression on his visage. "No one talks about how _scared_ they are of dying. How scared they are of never coming home. Never seeing their loved ones again." Then, he smiled self-deprecatingly. "Maybe I'm just a coward, huh?"

Heavy scrutinized the other man's features, perplexed by the rhetorical question. He didn't understand why Johnny would call himself a coward. Johnny had to confront bigotry every day of his life in the country of his birth, live with it and the fact that he had to battle his own countrymen for rights that should have been automatically granted him and fellow African-Americans. Live with it, and yet choose to lay down his life for said country and countrymen. That was no act of a coward.

Heavy was looking at the most valiant man he knew.

"Nyet. You are not coward." Heavy pressed one fist on the left side of his chest. "Take man vith much courage to speak heart."

The dismal cloud in Johnny's eyes dispelled at his resolute statement, and Johnny squeezed his right shoulder, smiling once more.

"Thank you, my friend."

"Nyet, thank _you_, moi droog. Your people, they … _they_ …" Heavy waved his hands about in frustration when the words would not come to him. "Vashi sootechestvenniki ne pravy otnositʹsya k vam kak oni delayut!" Heavy smacked his left palm against his forehead, scrunching his eyes shut. "English no good! Hard to speak own heart."

"It's okay. Everybody's gotta start somewhere. Least you can speak two languages. Me, I can't talk Russian for shit."

Heavy gaped in bewilderment at the other man, not quite believing what he heard.

"Vhy … vhy you vant to have shit?"

Johnny laughed so hard and long that tears rolled down his face, but Heavy wasn't offended and ended up laughing almost as much, especially after Johnny clarified the colloquialism.

"That's why I like you, man. Never a dull day with you."

Johnny resumed his delving of the cupboard, soon exclaiming a cheerful, "Ah-_hah_!" and then carting to the bed a medium-sized, black suitcase and a stack of square record albums. Johnny opened the suitcase to display a portable, wind-up phonograph with a gold tone arm and red velvet interiors. Heavy had seen comparable phonographs in Moscow several years ago, but never purchased one. He had zero interest in rotting his ears with songs praising Stalin like a god.

"Here, why don't you give _these_ a try?" Johnny said, passing him the stack of records.

"The King Cole Trio," Heavy read off one record album cover. "Straighten Up and Fly Right."

"I tell you, the lead singer? He's gonna be _big_. He's gonna be a _singing star_ whose songs will be treasured for _decades_ to come, mark my words on it."

"King Cole Trio … vhat kind of music?"

"The greatest music in the world! _Jazz_! Killer-diller stuff! You heard of it?"

"Have heard. There is Soviet jazz. But Stalin send Soviet jazz players to Gulag."

Johnny wrinkled his nose in distaste.

"_Ugh_. He's a real screwed-up _meatball_, isn't he?"

"Da. Bonkers meatball creep." After sharing another satisfying laugh with Johnny, Heavy glanced at the record album in his hand. "Anything he hate, must be good."

And so, with the insertion of a record on the phonograph's turntable, the selection of revolution speed and the lowering of the tone arm's needle onto the spinning record, Heavy's interpretation of music was forever altered. His English did indeed improve after a period of listening to Johnny's records, his vocabulary dramatically so. It cracked Johnny up every time he attempted an Alabama accent to sound more like Nat King Cole. By the time the war ended and Johnny was honorably discharged after getting wounded in the shoulder, Heavy had memorized every Nat King Cole song Johnny owned, going on to amassing his own collection of music over the decades. In 1948, as the best man at Johnny's wedding in Baltimore, he sang the King Cole Trio's cover of Makin' Whoopee, sending everyone into hysterics.

Like Nat King Cole, Johnny was also a chain smoker who smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for over two decades. And like Nat King Cole, he died of lung cancer six years ago, survived by Mary-Louise and four children after fourteen years of blissful marriage. Heavy missed him.

"Johnny, you are vith the stars now," Heavy murmured twenty-five years after meeting his late friend, on the balcony of a building in 2Fort beneath the New Mexico night sky. "Do stars like jazz too?"

Neither Johnny or the stars answered him. Then again, he didn't expect it.

He sighed, then placed his binoculars on the wooden floor beside him and rested his head on his hands. He and Johnny were best friends till the man's passing. But he never told Johnny he was a homosexual. Johnny never suspected that he was, regularly introducing him to female friends and acquaintances, hoping he would meet that good American girl and get married and settle down too. They were all nice ladies, some of them stunning, actually. Some, he would have proposed to in a heartbeat, in another universe where he was a heterosexual man. It was pure luck that all the women liked him platonically and not more. He would have been hard-pressed to lie to them if they insisted on a romantic relationship with him. Maybe they _knew_, somehow, on some level that he wasn't sexually interested in them in spite of his determined ploy to be a ladies' man.

He wished that he'd told Johnny the truth. Maybe Johnny would have understood and accepted him. Maybe not. Maybe if Johnny was still alive, he'd be able to confide in his friend for one last time, to talk to him about … Medic.

Heavy sighed another time, a weightier and hopeful sigh. Ah, Medic, who'd become more fascinating the more he came to know the doctor since they met a month ago. After their very first chat in the dining hall, they didn't speak for almost four days. Circumstances – a leap straight into relentless combat with the rival team from BLU for three consecutive days, then a busy day of healing under the beam of Medic's marvelous Quick-Fix technology in the Infirmary – kept them apart.

Even when it was his turn to be treated, they hadn't talked much. At least, not on his part. He was in quite a bit of pain, more than he was willing to concede at the time, his innards exposed after Medic removed the bomb that had embedded itself in his chest courtesy of BLU's Soldier. Medic was rambling away about a patient with a missing skeleton and how some doctor was never heard from again, had behaved as if he'd just injected himself with an opiate drug and was riding high on the waves of chemical ecstasy and didn't pay heed to what the hell he was doing. It was the first time Heavy was frightened of someone else … which just caused him to _like _Medic tenfold.

Medic had laughed after narrating his tale, a high-pitched, gleeful laugh that compelled Heavy to laugh along with Medic although he was totally bemused and really, really wanted Medic to seal his chest. It spooked him that he could see his ribs, lungs, liver and whatever else dwelled in his body cavity. When Archimedes, Medic's pet dove, popped out of his guts drenched in his blood, he was speechless. By all rights, he should have bled to death or passed out but no, there he was, laughing until he was slamming hands on things, caring only that Medic was in a jovial mood. That Medic was talking to him again with that unique, accented voice that soothed his spirits –

Wait, did Medic say that he _lost_ his medical license?

Heavy blinked up at the sky, frowning. No, it couldn't be, he must have misheard it due to the din of explosions outside the Infirmary. Medic must have been referring to that _other_ doctor he was talking about. Yes, that must be it.

Heavy relaxed again, his eyes half-closed, smiling fondly as he recalled his healing by Medic. Medic had different kinds of laughter, and he cherished every one he'd heard. Well, okay, the maniacal laugh as Medic ÜberCharged his heart _did_ startle him, but it was one of Medic's laughs and so, it was lovely. And Medic's _smile_ after the ÜberCharge …

Heavy's smile broadened. Ah, Medic's smile at that instant was such a boyish, candid smile. Medic instantaneously appeared decades younger, brimming with elation that his heart had withstood the ÜberCharge and was now sturdier and healthier than ever. It was more than enough to compensate for the brief albeit agonizing reattachment of his heart to his body and the breaking of one lower rib in the process … along with Medic pinching his cheek and calling him baby.

Heavy's smile became a toothy grin. Yes, Medic _pinched his cheek_ and _called him baby_. He still couldn't believe it. He'd been so bowled over by the Quick-Fix mending his body – and his clothes! – to their original state that Medic's demonstrative action had not sunk in for hours afterwards, not until he'd walked Medic to the Infirmary after dinner and bade the doctor good night, and Medic had said to him with amused eyes, "Do you vant your _rib_ back?"

He knew he surprised Medic when he replied, "Is all right, Doktor. It vill grow back since you shorten it before you fix me."

He'd tried not to smile as Medic's mouth opened, then closed, then opened again to say, "You know about … You noticed."

"Da. I also notice you _tease_ me vhen you say to Archameedees that ribs don't grow back."

Oh, if Medic's boyish smile was divine to behold, then Medic turning red as a rose from forehead to neck at his repartee was a feast for his eyes. It didn't upset him that Medic mumbled, "Gute Nacht, Herr Heavy," and dashed through the Infirmary doors before he could say anything else. Medic would probably have stabbed him with one of those bloodcurdling syringes for the immense smile on his face.

Ribs _could_ grow back, if they were shortened properly, in a matter of two to three months. Heavy found it strange that the Quick-Fix could heal very critical flesh wounds and internal injury but not bone-related damage like his broken rib. It piqued his curiosity enough that he'd approached Medic two days after that night and requested for permission to examine the Quick-Fix and Medic's Medi-Gun to sort out this issue.

It was the sole reason for him frequently visiting the Infirmary since. Really. It wasn't like he was there to ogle Medic on the doctor's home ground, to bask in Medic's presence as much as he could without provoking suspicion. To see Medic's dark hair shine in sunlight and moonlight, Medic's graceful hands and long fingers in their red gloves wipe an assortment of medical implements and turn the mundane into a riveting performance. To see the gleam of intellect in Medic's eyes as Medic worked diligently with his clinical experiments. To see Medic out of his white coat, the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up to reveal lean forearms dusted with fine hair that Heavy craved to caress. To see that childlike smile again. To hear Medic cluck at Archimedes and the other pet doves during feeding time. To hear Medic's many laughs once more, hear that voice with its varied moods, and listen to Medic's funny if sometimes mystifying stories. No, that would be _rude_, would it not?

So, Quick-Fix. Medi-Gun. Da, they were the only reason for his frequent visits to the Infirmary. They were efficient, well-built equipment, considering Medic was not an engineer by trade nor had formal training for such production. In his class back at Fort Belvoir, he would have graded both apparatuses an 'A' and _no_, it was _not_ because Medic was obviously a smart, gifted man with multiple talents and had the handsomest face he had seen and would ever see in his life. It would be 'A' for effort, nothing else. Nothing.

Heavy heaved yet another sigh, breathing in the cool night air and then exhaling it audibly, his features tender with reminiscence. Ah, Medic. Medic, with whom he ate breakfast every morning and dinner every evening since they met. Medic, with whom he fought as one in their skirmishes with BLU, invincible and undefeatable. Medic, whom he saw when he shut his eyes in bed at night, whom he saw before he awakened at dawn.

Medic, whom he had permitted to touch and handle Sasha, as he had no one else before.

"You can touch Sasha vith no gloves."

A week ago, Medic showed up at his room after dinner. He had just finished cleaning Sasha at the time and was putting away the rags, brushes and solvents onto a shelf, and when Medic announced his presence with a mild knock on the door, Heavy thought it was his brain tricking him. Nobody visited his room. The majority of his interactions with his teammates occurred in the dining hall or recreation room where the television, pool table and bar were. However, when he opened the door and saw Medic standing there, he profusely thanked Fate for the anomaly and hurried Medic inside before the doctor changed his mind.

Medic's eyes were drawn straightaway to Sasha on the table next to the bed.

And for the very first time, Heavy _wished_ for another person's hands upon his Minigun.

"Do not vorry. My hands are clean," Medic said as he stripped off his gloves and tucked them into a coat pocket, and Heavy nodded in acknowledgement. He wasn't worried. He trusted Medic.

Heavy didn't realize he'd been holding his breath until Medic's naked fingers made contact with Sasha's humongous barrel cluster. He said nothing as Medic traced the length of one of the barrels, from its mouth to the metal housing of Sasha's electric drive, rotary chamber and rotating firing pin assembly. Medic's fingers were pale, an eye-catching contrast to Sasha's black steel.

Medic's touch was elegant. Reverent. Faultless.

"You are only other man in the vorld to touch Sasha and live to tell it," Heavy said, euphoric.

Medic's eyes centered on him. They were unguarded, honest. Cognizant of the magnitude of Heavy allowing him to touch Sasha. Heavy gazed into their blue depths as Medic gazed back, and they remained that way for a while, Heavy seated on a chair by the table and Medic standing next to him, Medic's hands on Sasha's metal housing, his left hand on the barrel cluster. Again, Heavy didn't realize he'd been holding his breath until Medic's eyes glided away, back onto Sasha.

"You are a very skilled weapons engineer, Heavy," Medic murmured, and within Heavy's chest, a sun was aglow. Heavy appreciated the praise very much, as much as he did of Medic no longer addressing him in a formal manner. Medic saw him as more than a colleague now. Medic saw him as a _friend_.

"Spasibo, Doktor."

Medic's hands slid down Sasha's barrels again, and then, the fingers of Medic's left hand were but a hair's breadth away from his.

Heavy did not move his hand away.

Neither did Medic.

"Sasha ... It is a name used primarily by _males_ in Europe. A diminutive of Alexander, ja?"

It took a couple of seconds for Heavy to catch the message between the lines. When he built and named his Minigun so many years ago, everyone who knew about it assumed Sasha was a female name since they assumed he was a heterosexual man. After all, why would a heterosexual man name his gun with a _male_ name?

But he was _not_ heterosexual, and Medic was correct. Sasha was a very common, non-formal male name in Europe. Heavy had calculatingly picked it because it was a _unisex_ name, used by men _and_ women in Europe. Everyone else was welcome to assume Sasha was female. Often times, he would reinforce that assumption. He alone knew his Sasha was male.

And until he knew for a certainty that Medic was tolerant of homosexuality and homosexuals, that he wouldn't lose the doctor's friendship, it had to stay that way.

"Is true. But Sasha …" Heavy rubbed the Minigun's barrels. His fingers tingled when they grazed Medic's. "Sasha is also from Alexandra. Woman's name."

The deceitful words were bitter on his tongue.

Medic removed his hands from Sasha, putting them on the table in front of the Minigun.

"I see," Medic muttered, and all of a sudden, Heavy felt cold inside. He felt as if he'd missed something important, something _very_ important, but couldn't place his finger on it. He felt as if he'd _disappointed_ Medic, as if Medic believed he had no reason to linger anymore.

No, _no_, that wouldn't do at all.

"I build Sasha during Vorld Var II," he said, going with what he knew to be an unbeaten technique at regaining attention: Talking about Sasha. "She weighs one-hundred-and-fifty kilograms and fire two-hundred dollar, custom-tooled cartridges at ten thousand rounds per minute. It cost four hundred _thousand_ dollars to fire Sasha … for _twelve seconds_."

Medic was gazing at him again. He was warm again.

"And because it cost so much, US army build smaller, cheaper model. US army liked it so much, smaller models vere used in the var." Heavy looked into Medic's eyes and said, "Sasha's little brothers and sisters killed many, _many_ Nazi during the var. Tens of thousands."

Medic gave Sasha a piercing glance. Then, Medic placed his hands upon the weapon a second time, with even more reverence than before, and Heavy rejoiced. If he had a smidgen of doubt left about Medic not being a Nazi, it was banished for good.

"Danke, Heavy," Medic whispered, staring downwards at the Minigun.

Heavy laid his hand on Sasha's barrel cluster once more, a mere inch away from Medic's left hand. He dared not move it nearer.

"It vas necessary thing to do. Vorld vould be in great suffering today, if they won the var."

"Ja."

The single word seemed to bear the weight of a whole planet's anguish. Medic's eyes had turned so old, so disenchanted.

Heavy yearned to set his hand on top of Medic's, to clasp Medic's hands in his and protect their owner from the demons of the past.

_What happened to you during the war, moi darogoi vrach?_

Heavy never uttered that aloud. Medic had departed from his room minutes later, though not before asking him quietly, "Do you know how to play chess?"

He'd said yes, yes, he did, and he would love to play chess with Medic some time, if that was Medic's desire.

Medic's small smile had said everything.

In the subsequent hours, stretched out on his bed in the dimness of night, Heavy couldn't stop smiling to himself. He hadn't felt so content in another person's company for so long. Before Medic, only Johnny could imbue such peace within him.

Johnny would have liked Medic. Maybe Johnny would have found Medic _eccentric_, but Heavy was sure, Johnny would have liked the German doctor too.

Johnny was a good man, a true friend, an exemplary soldier in the US army.

"WE LOST TODAY BECAUSE OF YOU, YOU _RETARDED_ _SOVIET GREASEBAG!_"

Then there were men like Soldier.

"YOU GOT NOTHING TO SAY, _MAGGOT_?!"

Today's outburst of verbal rage was, by far, Soldier's most extreme towards Heavy. Soldier was, as Johnny would put it, crazy with a capital 'C'. Usually, he was capable of letting Soldier's frenzied rants roll off him like water off a duck –

"WE _LOST_ TODAY BECAUSE OF YOU! YOU AND _YOU_, YOU _SISSY_ _NAZI CANDYASS_!"

But whenever Soldier attacked Medic, that crossed the line.

"Doktor is _not_ Nazi," Heavy grounded out, glaring down his nose at Soldier in the base's Intelligence room.

"OH, _NO_, HE'S NOT JUST A _NAZI_, HE'S _JOSEF MENGELE NUMBER TWO_!"

From the corner of his eyes, Heavy saw Medic's eyes go wide as saucers with indignation and shock, saw the blood drain from Medic's face. Heavy's vision went red.

"Soldier _shut up_ now," Heavy snarled, lifting his fists in an unambiguous threat in front of Soldier's face. "Or I _hit_ you _dead_."

Soldier evidently didn't give a shit that he was _this_ close to a gory demise, Respawn system or no.

"YOU THINK I GIVE TWO FLAMING FUCKS _WHAT_ YOU _TRY_ TO DO TO ME, RUSSKI MAGGOT?! YOU AND THE _NAZI KRAUT_ MADE US LOSE! _AGAIN!_"

"_C'mon now_, Solly, there's no need for this shouting –"

Engineer, in his typical yellow helmet, tinted goggles and dark grey overalls, was clinging onto Soldier's shoulder and upper arm in a near-futile attempt to restrain the uncompromising man from charging at Heavy and Medic. The other members of the team stood a safe distance away, watching the scene unfold like it was a primetime television special.

Pyro was covering the eye sockets of their mask with their hands and peeking through their gloved fingers. Scout's eyes zipped from Heavy and Medic to Soldier and Engineer and back, over and over like one would watch a ping pong ball bounce from one side of the court to the other in a feverish match. Sniper was gawping at Soldier, his facial features contorted in an expression of disgust that was plain even behind yellow aviator glasses and underneath a slouch hat. Demoman chugged yet another bottle of Scrumpy, occasionally licking his lips and burping. Spy was lighting a cigarette, thoroughly unimpressed with Soldier's range of insults.

All of them were sporting minor injuries and, with the exception of Soldier, all of them just wanted to be treated by Medic and eat dinner and go to sleep already. Heavy was certainly hankering for a hot, filling meal and a recreational hour or two of chess with Medic. Not this unnecessary, condescending vilification by this American … _madman_.

"I WILL GODDAMN _SHOUT_ IF I WANT TO, _DAMNIT!_ YOU TURNING INTO A _PINKO_, ENGIE?!"

"_Solly!_ You're just being _ridiculous_ now!"

Heavy didn't think he could have scowled more than he was, but he did when Soldier rebuffed Engineer, stomped up to him and jabbed him several times in the stomach with a forefinger.

"_LOOK_ AT THIS _FAT TUB OF COMMIE LARD_! IF HE'D _RUN_ FASTER, WE COULD HAVE _STOPPED_ THE BLU SCOUT FROM _TAKING OUR INTEL_!"

Heavy snorted, his crossness receding a little at Soldier's juvenile criticism of his figure. Really, _that_ was the best Soldier could do?

"Fat belly save me from dying in Gulag."

Engineer reared back in surprise at his calmly articulated statement. The other team members detached from the quarrel glanced at Heavy simultaneously, Spy eyeing him with curiosity, Demoman frozen in the deed of imbibing from his bottle of Scrumpy, Pyro lowering their hands to their sides. Soldier was also affected, going stock-still, eyes hidden by his combat helmet.

Heavy swore to himself, wishing he could slap his own mouth right then. Oh, _zamechatel'nyy_, now he'd gone and done it, now he'd never hear the end of it from Soldier –

"The _Gulag_, huh?" Soldier speaking at a tolerable level, with that insidious tone and lack of slurs, was doubly hair-raising. "Why _were_ you sent to the Gulag?"

Heavy's insides abruptly felt as if it was being mashed into bloody slop by an iceberg. Everyone was staring at him now, including Medic whose expression was stricken. Heavy had told _no_ _one_ why he was shipped to the Gulag. Ever. No one, not even Johnny. Not even the lieutenant he'd met in Tibet who'd facilitated his exodus from Asia to America.

Not even Medic, who'd become his closest friend alive.

Like _hell_ he was going to tell _Soldier_.

Heavy's eyes narrowed to angry slits, and he said through gritted teeth, "Is not your business, _mu'dak_."

Soldier's reaction was immediate. Ferocious.

"WHAT'D YOU _CALL_ ME, YOU _BASTARD_?!"

Soldier leapt at Heavy, howling at the top of his lungs, fists flying towards Heavy's face and all hell broke loose with everyone yelling and joining the melee. Engineer, Sniper and Pyro hurtled themselves bodily at Soldier and seized his flailing arms and legs. Demoman waved his bottle of Scrumpy about and cackled drunkenly and goaded the hullabaloo on. Spy had his right hand in his suit jacket, appearing _very _persuaded to whip out his six-chambered revolver or Balisong and use it on Soldier. Scout scurried to and fro like a jackrabbit in flames, in a quandary as to who was friend and who was foe in this situation. And Medic –

"_Lass ihn in Ruhe_, du taktlos, schrecklichen kleinen Mann!"

Medic had wedged himself between Heavy and Soldier from the onset of Soldier's physical assault, back pressed to Heavy's chest and abdomen, arms spread to the sides in a protective gesture. Medic's hair was brushing Heavy's nose and lips, and its silkiness was all Heavy could focus on while Medic and Soldier bellowed at each other and the other RED mercenaries shouted as much at both of them. Medic's hair smelled so clean and _pleasant _even after a long day's battle. Only in his imagination had he felt Medic's hair against his face like this, and it was wonderful, _so_ wonderful to feel Medic's lithe body against his that all his wrath flowed away, replaced by sweet stupefaction.

Heavy didn't remember how he and the rest of the team went from being in the Intelligence room to being in the waiting room outside the Infirmary. All he remembered was the scent of Medic's hair and the solidity of Medic's body, of Medic's arms reaching back impulsively around him to shield him from Soldier's savagery although he hadn't needed it. Medic stood up against a wacko like Soldier for him despite being harangued himself. Medic _cared_ for him.

The illuminating realization was made twice as uplifting by the soundtrack of Soldier's whines and yells of agony emanating from inside the Infirmary as he was being … ministered to by Medic.

"Lie down on the stretcher, bitte," Medic said to him upon his entry, after a docile Soldier limped out with Engineer berating him for his lousy behavior.

Heavy had made sure he was the last to be treated. To resume his examination of Medic's Quick-Fix and Medi-Gun right after, of course. Just that. Nothing more.

He gazed at Medic's face as Medic switched on the Quick-Fix and directed its red, restorative beam on him, first on his face where Soldier slugged him, then on his chest and arms where he'd developed serious bruises from evading BLU Demoman's grenades. Medic's movements were brusque. Medic's lips were pursed into a livid line. Medic's brows were creased and his eyes were distrustful, and it saddened Heavy to know how much grief Soldier's reckless accusations had caused his doctor.

"You are credit to team," he murmured to Medic after the treatment. Medic was tidying up medical paraphernalia on a wheeled, metal table near the stretcher, and when Medic glanced at him where he sat on the stretcher, Medic didn't look away. Heavy did not look away either, his chest expanding with something he dared not name as the storm clouds in Medic's eyes dispersed and the light returned to them.

"Danke, Heavy."

Heavy slithered off the stretcher and stood up. Medic's movements had gentled, his expression eased, but Heavy knew the doctor preferred to be alone tonight. With a nod, he sauntered to the doors of the Infirmary, telling himself he was just imagining Medic's eyes upon him. At the doors, he halted, then pivoted around to face Medic.

Medic was indeed looking at him.

Knowing that, that nameless, magnificent thing within his chest flourished.

"Doktor … ve make good team," Heavy said tenderly, sincerely.

Once again, they regarded each other, the few meters of space between them seemingly a thousand kilometers long and at the same time, just a centimeter. The few seconds that passed, an eternity that Heavy didn't want to end.

"Yes. Ve do," Medic replied, the light in those big blue eyes vivid, and Heavy felt the floor beneath his feet fall away for that nameless, magnificent thing within his chest had become wispier than a feather but stronger than the toughest element in the universe. He was floating, even as he bade Medic good night, as he went to his room to pick up his binoculars, as he wandered outside to his private hideaway, and if he had done a skip and jump of bliss and smiled like a child, well, there was no one there to mock him for it.

Now, here he was on this balcony, staring up at the stars and galaxies, his chest so full from the song blooming in it, a song he first heard in 1955 when he watched the autobiographical, drama-romance film that inspired it. He favored Nat King Cole's cover of it, but the original by The Four Aces was as moving for him, and bozhe moi, how the other RED mercenaries would laugh their buttocks off at him if they knew his eyes had welled up like a baby's at the movie's concluding scene.

And with one deep inhalation, his hands upon his chest, his eyes glassy with nostalgia, he sang boldly, unworried about being overheard:

_Love is many splendored thing_

_Is the April rose that only grow in early spring_

_Love is nature's vay of giving reason to be living_

_Golden crown that make a man a king_

_Once on high and vindy hill_

_In morning mist, two lovers kissed and vorld stood still_

_Then your fingers touched my silent heart and taught it how to sing_

_Yes, true love is many splendored thing_

And suddenly, the image of Medic materialized in his mind, of Medic grasping his heart beating anew in those nimble hands, of Medic smiling so exuberantly, and Heavy's sight blurred, his voice turning soft and languid with emotion:

_Then your fingers touched my silent heart and taught it how to sing_

_Yes, true love is many splendored thing_

For many minutes afterwards, Heavy was struck wordless, his hazy eyes unseeing as it dawned on him what he'd just done. He had named it. Named that magnificent, unbelievable thing that had made itself at home in his chest … and there was no taking it back.

Love.

_True_ love, for the extraordinary, breathtaking German doctor who'd touched his heart and taught it how to truly sing for the first time.

"Oh, heart, vhat have you done now?"

Heavy's heart didn't answer him, and Heavy sensed only the weight of an invisible golden crown upon his head, morning mist against his cheeks and smelled only the scent of fresh April roses in the early spring air.


	3. Chapter 3

Author's notes: This is about two-thirds of the chapter, hence the 'to be continued' at the end. I'll edit the chapter when the rest is complete and copypaste the rest here.

_iii. If it takes another thousand years, a thousand wars,_  
_The towers rise to numberless floors in space_  
_I could shed another million tears, a million breaths,_  
_A million names but only one truth to face _

Now, when Heavy thinks about the months after the RED team's orientation day – and it was just one day as RED had warned them the warfare would commence within twenty-four hours of their arrival at 2Fort – he thinks most about his interactions with his fellow team members off the battlegrounds. In combat, his mind was shrouded in a crimson miasma, the world around him a fuzziness of darting figures and eruptions of light, of earth tremors and deafening blasts overwhelmed by his exhilarated laughter and roar of, "CRY SOME _MORE_!"

There was next to nothing human about his thoughts throughout such spans of time, nothing _civilized_. There was only his reptilian mind, hungering to be king of the jungle, hungering for more blood, more death. Death, death, _death_ until no one in his path was left alive.

It was why he was so adamant about Medic being behind him at _all_ times during battle. It didn't count that they had the Respawn system, that they could return to life no matter how many times they died. The sheer thought of inadvertently murdering Medic in his berserker state made him sick to his stomach. He would rather shoot himself in the head a hundred times over than commit such a heinous act, accident or not.

He had shared _that _thought with Demoman one night as they were having drinks at the bar in the rec room, six weeks after orientation day. It was past midnight, and they were the only occupants. He was nursing a shot of Stolichnaya while Demoman happily guzzled another bottle of Scrumpy. He was astonished that Demoman wasn't already dead from alcohol poisoning, the way the trigger-happy man could consume bottles of the hard cider per week. Perhaps Demoman was actually a mythical, indestructible creature like that Loch Ness monster he kept going on about. Except he was a Scrumpy-addicted one.

"Ah, lad, ye cannae help it if ye shoot Medic by accident one day. It's _war_! Friendly fire happens all a' time."

Heavy tried not to wince as Demoman drank straight from the bottle and then released a resounding burp that assailed his nostrils with an indescribable pong. _Gospodi_, and here he thought Old Man Vasily, the drunkard whose bakery was on Mokhovaya Street where he'd lived in Moscow, had rotten breath!

"Maybe you are right, Demo." Heavy took a long sip of his vodka, mostly to use it as a barrier against the reek. "But I still vould not vant it to happen. To any other teammate also."

Demoman grunted, then punched his upper arm and said, "Ye worry too much! Respawn takes care a' everythin', ye big galoot! Jus' th' other day, Sniper and Soldier were blown up by one 'a my bombs an' they were jus' _fine_!"

Heavy sucked in his lower lip and did his damnest to not smile. Yes, he distinctly recalled that incident. Five days ago, Sniper and Soldier were chased by BLU's Pyro down the bridge connecting RED's fort with BLU's, and Heavy and Medic had appeared just in time to see one of Demoman's bombs sailing through the air … and landing directly on the ground between Soldier and Sniper. Without Medic's ÜberCharge, they never had a chance and died at once, their obliterated remains siphoned off to who knows where before reemerging in the Respawn room. It wasn't the unintentional bombing that tickled Heavy though, as much as he'd enjoyed watching Soldier explode into blood-stained chunks. It was Sniper's behavior upon coming out of the Respawn room and back to the scene of the crime.

"WHERE'S THAT _BLOODY_ _ALCOHOLIC BOGAN_?!"

Sniper had unsheathed his kukri, its curved blade glinting in the sunlight. Heavy had never seen Sniper so infuriated. Even Medic had one eyebrow quirked upwards as the Australian mercenary tramped an unerring course towards Demoman, who emitted a very unmanly squeak and scrambled up the miraculously intact left post of the bridge onto its just as miraculously intact roof. Sniper rapidly followed suit, hacking at Demoman's legs with his kukri, sending splinters of wood whirling into the air with each chop into the post. Demoman was fast enough that the lethal blade missed his limbs by inches.

"THROW A _BOMB_ AT ME, WILL YA, _WILL YA_?!"

Spy made his presence known at Heavy's right side with a snicker and an amused smirk.

"Ah, the wild bushman in hiz element," Spy said, puffing out a ring of smoke after inhaling it from his lit cigarette.

Heavy noticed, with a surreptitious side glance, that Spy was not only staring at Sniper, but was most certainly _not_ looking above Sniper's waist as Sniper clambered across the bridge roof to get to a shrieking Demoman.

"I WOS AIMIN' TH' BOMB AT THEIR PYRO! I _SWEAR_ TAE YE!"

Demoman's voice was ten times higher in octave.

"STOP MAKIN' EXCUSES AN' C'MERE, YA BLOODY DRUNKEN _DONGER_!"

Demoman almost met his demise at the kukri's razor-sharp edge. He _would_ have, if it wasn't for Sniper realizing that _everybody_ present had gone stationary and noiseless and was observing his every move with rapt eyes. Heavy had become acquainted enough with Sniper to know how much of an aversion the man had towards public attention on him, and he saw the very air go out of Sniper the way it would out of a balloon, saw Sniper hunch into a defensive posture when Spy chose that instance to cackle. Sniper had then scrambled down the roof faster than he'd gone up, striding back into their base without a glance at anyone. With Spy standing at his side, Heavy had a firsthand view of Sniper purposefully bumping into Spy's shoulder as he passed.

"Ah, so he iz still angry with me," Spy murmured inexplicably, then vanished into thin air.

The mêlée of the day concluded a minute later with the Announcer's vociferous broadcast that RED had won, thanks to Scout taking advantage of the uncommon situation and sneaking in and out of BLU base with BLU's intel before anyone knew it. Heavy had had to suppress his curiosity numerous times since about Spy's behavior around Sniper and vice versa. It was quite out of the ordinary for Sniper to snap in public like he did, and Spy's comment before leaving the scene was … _curious_. There was something more going on between those two than met Heavy's eye –

"Aye, if ye want somethin' tae _really_ worry about, worry about that _monster_ in Loch Ness!"

Oh, Demoman was fuming about the hapless creature again. Heavy made the mistake of mumbling, "But … Loch Ness monster is not real –"

"YE TAKE THAT _BACK_, YE BLOODY _BA' HEID_!" Demoman hollered, banging his fist on the bar's cherry wood countertop with such ferocity that Heavy's glass of vodka shook. "TH' LOCH NESS MONSTER'S _REAL_! I _SEEN_ IT, THAT _CUNTBUGGERYFUCKTOLEYBUMSHITE BEAST_! I'M GONNAE _KILL_ IT IF IT'S TH' LAST THING I DO!"

Heavy's right eyebrow shot up. Apparently, apart from drinking potent cider like water, Demoman was also rather talented at ejecting profanity.

"But _vhy_?" Heavy said like he would to a ticking time-bomb on two legs, wiping errant spittle off his face with the back of his hand. "It is not – it is just animal that live in lake. Vhat did it do to you?"

Demoman sniffed, took another swig of Scrumpy, then said with a very grave expression, "Jus' an animal in a lake? Nay, th' Loch Ness monster is no' jus' an animal. S'a _demon_ from th' lowes' level a' _hell_. My parents are _dead_ 'cause a' it."

Heavy was taken aback. Demoman's parents, _killed_ by this monster? Was it possible that books about mythological creatures were wrong, that the Loch Ness monster was _real_, then?

"_Aye_, when I wos a wee lad a' six, I haddae plan, a _terrible_ plan tae kill it. I planted dozens a' homemade bombs 'long th' shores of Loch Ness, but instead a' killin' th' beast, it wos my _parents_ who were killed!" Demoman sniffed again and wiped his nose with his left hand. "'Cause a' that _beast_, I los' my _eye_ too and had tae go tae a school fer orphans near Ullapool 'til my real parents found me."

Heavy frowned and blinked hard at the same time. Wait, didn't Demoman just say that his parents were killed?

"Real parents?" Heavy asked, and Demoman replied, "I didnae know at th' time either, but I wos adopted. My real parents came tae see me at th' Crypt Grammar School for Orphans where I wos and told me I wos abandoned at birth 'til my demolition skills showed themselves. Wos a Highland Demolition Men tradition."

Heavy did not know whether to be happy that Demoman's biological parents were still alive, or to shake his head in mystification and sympathy. These Highland Demolition people were a strange, strange people. Did _all _of them practice bomb-making as children? Even the _babies_? How did any of them survive long enough to unify into a clan? And if Demoman never knew his birth parents until his adoptive parents died and he went to a school for orphans, how did he become occupied with explosives and demolition in the first place? Was it in his _genes_, then? And how did Demoman survive all this time doing what he did while being a raging alcoholic?

These were questions Heavy wisely decided to not ask in case more of Demoman's Scrumpy-laden spittle bombarded his face again.

"You are married, Demo?" he said, changing the subject to one he hoped was more mollifying in nature.

Demoman's expression shifted from solemnity to … something Heavy could not define. It seemed to him to be a weird combination of satisfaction, resentment, anticipation and no small amount of guilt.

"Got _somebody's_ wife," Demoman muttered with the mouth of his bottle of Scrumpy against his lips.

Heavy was careful to not display any outward reaction to the confession, pretending to not have heard it. So Demoman was having an affair with another man's wife. It was a deed he disapproved of, but who was he to judge another man for that when he had sins of his own that dwarfed it?

Many would say sleeping with another man's wife was a far cry above brutally slaughtering scores of men, in terms of morality.

"Vhat vas that?" Heavy said.

Demoman sat up and pasted on a smile, and Heavy abruptly felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, hit by a premonition that maybe, _just_ maybe, Demoman wasn't always as inebriated and irrational as he appeared. Maybe it was a _pretense_, to fool others into underestimating him, into seeing him as he _wanted_ them to see him.

Just like his decades-long pretense of being a heterosexual man with no attraction whatsoever towards other men.

"Said I'm no' married," Demoman replied louder. "Marriage's no' fer th' likes a' me!"

Heavy nodded, sipping his vodka again. He wasn't going to push Demoman for more details. Everyone had their secrets, and no one liked to have them unveiled for the world to see. Least of all, him.

A minute of comfortable silence passed. Then, brows furrowing with puzzlement once more, Heavy said, "Vait. I still do not understand."

"Understand wot?"

Heavy scratched the side of his neck.

"I still do not understand vhy you hate Loch Ness monster. Vas not Loch Ness monster that plant bombs. Vas, _uh_, you –"

When Demoman slammed his fist on the countertop this time, Heavy's near-empty glass toppled over.

"YE SIDIN' WITH THAT BLOODY _MONSTER_ O'ER ME, YER _MATE_?!"

Heavy stared at Demoman with wide eyes, both lips sucked into his mouth. Chyort, would this _volatile_ man blow him up with a grenade right there in the rec room if he said _yes_?

With no vested interest in perishing that night, Heavy whispered under his breath, "Loch Ness monster is not real so …" then at a normal volume, "No, I do not side vith Loch Ness monster."

In a flash, Demoman was grinning again, barking out a spry laugh and smacking Heavy on the back.

"Ah, yer a good fella, ye wee bawsack."

Unsure of what a 'wee bawsack' was, Heavy simply smiled, then bade Demoman good night after washing his glass in a small sink at the bar. The next morning, before the day's hostilities, he found Demoman asleep at the bar, sitting precariously on a stool, face flat on the countertop with his arms cuddling an empty bottle of Scrumpy to the side of his head. It was incredible that a half hour later, the demolition expert was hopping on his feet and raring to go to war with BLU, with no hint of a hangover and no blown up teammates at the end of the day.

In light of that, Heavy's qualms about fighting alongside Demoman faded. In the subsequent weeks, his qualms about other teammates also faded, Sniper in particular. Sniper, by his own admission, was not an easy man with whom to converse. Sniper was accustomed to being alone for prolonged stretches of time, sitting silent and immobile in the same spot for hours, sometimes _days_, the entirety of his concentration on his doomed target. Chitchat was meaningless to such a man.

But, also by Sniper's own admission, even a marksman who enjoyed his job like he did couldn't do it every waking hour of his life. Even a recluse like him required social interaction on occasion to maintain his grip on reality. So, six days after chatting with Demoman in the rec room, on a rare no-combat day, Heavy approached Sniper's camper van with a pack of cold beer and was greeted with a small smile and a nod.

"Thanks, mate. I wos just thinkin' a' goin' inside t' get some," Sniper said as Heavy handed him a bottle.

"Da. Is hot day."

The desert of the Badlands in which 2Fort was situated was higher in elevation than the Sonoran Desert to the west, over six hundred meters above sea level, which meant milder climates and lower temperatures in the summer. Heavy had endured much higher temperatures than today's in the expanse of the Amargosa Desert in Nevada during the late '50s, but 40°C with no breeze wasn't something to be scoffed at either. Sniper was lazing on a plastic, green lawn chair next to a portable fan, clad in just denim shorts and a white tank top beneath the merciful shade of his camper's striped awning, and still, he was sweating, tank top darker at the underarms, moisture dotting his nose, aviator glasses and the sides of his face. It made Heavy ponder why Sniper didn't just stay in the living quarters when the weather got this hot. The continuous air-conditioning there – as well as in the Infirmary – was superb. Was Sniper _that_ averse to social interaction?

Heavy glanced at Sniper's 1965 Land Rover camper, at the vehicle's green-grey, steel exterior with discolored patches, at the aged albeit resilient wood of the carriage, and saw history etched in them. No, perhaps it had nothing to do with avoidance of social interaction. Perhaps Sniper merely wished to be where his heart was.

"Is fine, I sit here on crate," Heavy said when Sniper sat up and was about to stand and offer him the lawn chair, gesticulating at a large wooden crate beside the chair. There were no discernible labels on it, but Sniper didn't protest and sat back down on the lawn chair. Heavy didn't ask what was in the crate and gingerly sat on it, loosening up when the box didn't so much as creak under his weight. Wouldn't be the first time he'd have shattered a wooden crate by sitting on it.

For a while, the two men glugged down their revitalizing beer, absorbing the panorama of remote, contradictory cliffs and mountains thousands of meters high and treeless miles and miles of fine sand and rubble beyond 2Fort's boundary fence in a deferential hush. The desert was so unlike the vast mountain ranges of Siberia, and yet it possessed a familiar splendor that spoke to Heavy's heart. One had to be truly hardy to survive here. There was no room for the feeble, no room for mistakes. Death was a tenacious companion. So was life, however, and life was _everywhere_, if one knew where to look, to _see_.

Heavy wanted to impart these observations to Sniper. Problem was, he was clueless about how to do so without risking much awkwardness on Sniper's side. Sniper wasn't just reclusive, he was a very private man too, and might not be motivated to share personal details of any kind in return.

Heavy smiled to himself. Heh, he wasn't the sort to shy away from an opportunity to befriend someone, irrespective of the severity of their introversion. A friendship could make the difference between life and death. Literally. He had learned that lesson well from his escape from the Gulag.

His smile widened as a grand icebreaker of a question arose in his mind. Ah, considering the first colonists of Australia were from the United Kingdom and Australian culture had British roots, Sniper _might_ know the answer to it.

"Sniper … am I a 'vee bawsack'?"

Sniper promptly sprayed the mouthful of beer he'd just sipped all over himself.

"I, _uhm_, I'm gonna guess _Demo_ called ya that, yeah?" Sniper said, once he wiped his face dry with his tank top and was no longer coughing.

"Yes. Vhat it mean?"

Sniper cleared his throat, then said, "A'right, first things first. Wos Demo _happy_ or _mad _when he said that?"

Poker-faced, Heavy replied, "Vhat is definition of mad?"

Sniper's lips twitched with mirth, and for an instant, so did Heavy's.

"Wos he _angry_?"

"Nyet. He vas very happy, actually."

"Ah. Well …" Sniper pushed his glasses higher up his nose with a forefinger. Its yellow-tinted lenses obscured Sniper's eyes from Heavy. "S'an informal word t' describe someone or somethin' as small, wee. As for bawsack, it's actually _ballsack_. Means yer, _uh_, scrotum."

Heavy blinked.

"Scrotum?"

Sniper cleared his throat another time, then pointed downwards at his groin. As Heavy's gaze followed the direction of Sniper's finger, he became very conscious of Sniper's physique, of the way Sniper's tank top clung to the wiry man's torso and delineated the firm curves of a broad, hairy chest and rippled belly, of the hem of aforementioned tank top riding up to expose a trail of hair from the belly button down. A treasure trail, if Heavy remembered right, and aptly named. He'd discovered many a treasure down such trails, be they blond, brunet or black.

Heavy wondered whether Medic had a treasure trail too. A silky, dark trail of fine hair he would lick and nuzzle and _kiss_ till he arrived at the paragon of paradise between Medic's long, supple legs, and _oh_, what he would _do_ then, to make Medic writhe and moan with pleasure, make Medic wrap those legs around his head, his _waist_ as they made _love_.

If only he could be so _fortunate_. If only.

Heavy hoped that the heat of the desert would excuse the heat of his face, that Sniper couldn't hear the thumping of his heart. He coughed, then said with a nonplussed frown, "Oh. So, Demo call me … 'little scrotum'?"

The twitching of Sniper's lips became a full-scale grin, infusing a brightness in Sniper's features that rivaled the glare of the sand. Sniper was an attractive man, and in another time, another life, where Sniper was amenable to homosexual sex or was homosexual himself, Heavy might have propositioned him. But in another life, _he_ might not be homosexual. In another life, he might have remained trapped in the Gulag, and died there, alone, never knowing and learning of the world beyond the Soviet Union. Never knowing Medic.

In another life, Medic might not exist at all.

And any life without Medic, without _loving_ him, was not one Heavy yearned to live.

"I'm sure he meant it with th' upmost affection, mate," Sniper said while patting him on the shoulder in consolation, and he smiled and chuckled with Sniper. Whatever ice there was between them was undeniably broken now.

To guarantee it stayed that way, Heavy asked, "Sniper, vhat is 'donger'?"

Sniper laughed, then proceeded to teach him that – "S'a slang for dick. Like doodle. Or cockie." – along with a slew of Australian lingo and cuss words. Then, as if inner floodgates within had burst open, Sniper spoke animatedly and at length about his birthplace, highlighting its unique fauna found nowhere else on the planet. Heavy was mesmerized by the fantastical imagery Sniper's descriptions painted for him, one or two of which he deemed too farfetched to be true.

"This koala, I can believe is real. Is like little grey bear vith long claws and bad temper. Emu and dingo, also. But this _plahteepoose_ that is mammal that lay _eggs_ and look like duck, otter and beaver _together_ …" Heavy shook his head. "It cannot be real."

Beer bottle on his lap, Sniper laid one hand over his heart and raised the other with its palm forward, expression earnest.

"I swear, th' platypus' real. I don't blame ya for not believin' me though. When British scientists saw its pelt in th' 18th century, they thought it wos a fraud, like maybe someone sewed a duck's beak t' a dead beaver. But I swear, it's _real_. Had a pet platypus when I wos a boy livin' in th' highlands in Tasmania. S'wos this cute, chubby little thing that'd swim up th' river every mornin' t' where th' family camper wos, an' I'd sit by th' riverbank an' share some a' me breakfast with her."

"How you know it vas she?"

"That's 'cause a female platypus doesn't have venom in its ankle spur. Got scratched a couple a' times when I stood shin-deep in th' river t' let her swim between me legs. If it'd been a male platypus, the pain from th' venom woulda made me wanna _kill_ myself. That's how bad it is." Before Heavy could comment on that, Sniper shrugged and said, "Yeah, I know, I wos young an' reckless. Mum screamed her head off when she saw me playin' with th' platypus th' first time. Wos just lucky it wos female."

Heavy gazed genially at Sniper as the Australian man drank another mouthful of beer. He understood his teammate a little better now, understood Sniper's necessity for solitude. Heavy didn't know much about Australia, much less about Tasmania, but if its highlands were anything like the mountains of Siberia, towns and villages must be very few and far between. Those who lived in the towns and villages would be in close-knit communities, while those who lived outside of them were hermits, eking out a living with Mother Nature as their sole provider. It was very likely that Sniper moved from one town to another in the family camper, always travelling, always uprooted before any bonds with other human beings could be set in stone. His playground would have been the tremendous wilderness, far from human civilization, and his friends would have been its untamed inhabitants, creatures of instinct and basic needs. Creatures of a primal language that did not distinguish the concepts of good and evil. Creatures that killed only for food, for survival.

So, how did a boy who had a pet platypus and lived in a camper with his parents in the Australian highlands turn into a professional assassin with a proclivity for fatal head shots?

Heavy turned his head to glance at the camper van behind him. Sniper did the same, then patted the side of the camper.

"Nah, s'not th' family camper. Sold that decades ago. My parents are livin' on th' mainland now, in Melbourne." A sentimental smile arched Sniper's lips. "_This_ camper's all mine. RED shipped it straight from th' Outback t' America as part a' my contract."

Heavy glanced at Sniper.

"The Outback?"

"Yeah. S'what we Aussies call any land outside a' urban areas. Land so remote an' arid nobody wants t' live in it." Sniper snorted. "A lot like _this_ place."

"Vhat vere you doing there?"

Sniper leaned back on his lawn chair, stretching his long legs and crossing his ankles, half-full beer bottle held with both hands against his abdomen. The wind from the portable fan ruffled his short, dark brown hair.

"Back in th' day, I'd live there all by myself for months on end, trackin' dangerous animals like crocs, snakes an' emus – '_oi_, don't _laugh_, emus are gentle birds if ya don't piss them off, yeah, but lemme tell ya, they're _lethal_ with those legs an' clawed feet a' theirs. One time, I got too close t' a male emu an' it chased me for wot felt like a bloody _mile_. Tried t' kick me _arse_ too! Thought I wos gonna _cark_ it an' – oh, ya think _that's_ funny, do ya?"

Heavy attempted to stifle his snigger and failed badly, shoulders shaking as he saw in his mind the image of a younger Sniper sprinting and screaming his lungs out while a colossal, brown-feathered flightless bird pursued him across sunbaked, orange-brown soil. It was like imagining Sniper being hounded by a … an overgrown chicken!

Luckily, Sniper didn't take offense to his amusement and sniggered also, and what could have been a discomfited moment became one of camaraderie.

"Yeah, it _is_ sorta funny when I think back on it," Sniper said after a while, still smiling. "S'wos a bloody _big_ bird. Almost _seven feet_ tall. Think _you_ would have had trouble dealin' with it too."

Heavy did a quick conversion of the height into meters and nearly gasped. A _bird_ that was over _two meters_ tall!

"Hah, _now _ya know wot I'm talkin' about, don't ya!"

Heavy grinned and said, "Da. But I vas also thinking … is big bird like that _tasty_ after _roast_?"

Sniper's laughter, when the man dropped his inhibitions, was unexpectedly jubilant and contagious. It bordered on paradoxical when paired with Sniper's dour everyday expression. Who knew that underneath that somber mien was the soul of a cheerful, carefree boy?

"Australia is place of many veird, vonderful things."

"It is," Sniper murmured, and Heavy heard the despondency in the two words, the despondency a man felt when he missed his homeland, and Heavy knew then that he wasn't the only man who could not go home. "If I had a choice back then, I woulda stayed in th' Outback forever, just livin' off th' land, trackin' animals for th' fun a' it, never havin' t' deal with other people. Ever. But ya can't have everythin' ya want. Specially not when yer money runs out an' ya need it for bullets for yer rifle an' petrol for yer camper."

Heavy said nothing, but looked at Sniper attentively. Sniper was staring out at the desert.

"Trackin' just isn't as fun when other people get involved. Worse when it's a buncha filthy rich, whingin' show ponies wantin' t' give wild game huntin' a burl like it's _child's play_." Sniper sneered, his nose wrinkling. "My last client for _that_ job wos this billionaire who owned one a' th' biggest loan companies in th' country. Had a _rep_ t' keep, so th' trip with his cobbers into th' Outback t' kill wild game wos all kept under wraps. I even had t' sign a secret contract sayin' they could sue th' livin' hell outta me if I ever told th' press about it. So here they were, these overly dressed yobbos who'd never _seen_ a real wild animal in their lives, orderin' me about an' tellin' me about their dozens a' petrol-guzzlin', luxury cars an' their supermodel wives an' how _hard_ life wos … an' when I finally found them th' biggest fucker of a croc I could, like in th' contract, ya know wot happened?"

"Vhat?" Heavy mumbled in amazement. He had never heard Sniper articulate so many sentences in one go before. Was it because of the heat, or the beer? Or both?

"Their gang leader, th' _wuss_ couldn't even aim his rifle at it 'cause his _knees_ were knockin' too hard. Th' croc was just _lyin'_ there, far away, starin' at him, an' he couldn't even aim an' pull th' trigger. His mates were wusses just like him, but they were lookin' at him like th' _dipstick_ he wos so … he turned th' rifle on _me_." Sniper's hands were taut around his beer bottle, white-knuckled. "Shouted a load a' codswallop about me not followin' th' deal. Demanded I walk right up t' th' croc an' shoot it in th' head, or he'd kill me an' let th' croc eat my _corpse_. Said he had th' money to cover it up, t' make sure no one would _ever_ find out wot happened t' me. Said he'd even kill Mum an' Dad,if it came t' that."

Heavy sighed, his own hands clenched around his beer bottle. Now, _now_ he understood Sniper's repugnance of human socialization. There were many menacing animals in the world, in Australia alone, but none more so than humans. None more malicious and loathsome. Above all, against their own.

"So … s'what I did. I walked up t' th' croc."

"Then vhat?"

"I looked it in th' eye. It looked back at me. Then I turned around an' told th' cowardly bastard he might as well shoot me 'cause I wosn't gonna shoot it. I _never_ killed an animal unless it wos for food."

Heavy smiled inwardly at that. He'd conjectured as much, but it was good to know it was fact.

"Th' bastard wos spewin' by then, purple in th' face, an' I thought he _wos_ really gonna shoot me. But then …" Sniper shook his head slowly, and his voice lowered with admiration. "Th' croc suddenly sprang t' life. Charged at him like a truck at full speed. Had him in its jaws, just like that, an' then his mates were all screamin' an' runnin' as th' croc dragged him into th' river an' under. I did shoot at it when it grabbed him, I did. But it wouldn't let go. He wos done for."

"I vould say, vorld did not lose anything vith him gone."

Sniper smirked, though not cruelly.

"He had a wife an' two kids." Sniper paused, then said with a broader smirk, "An' _four mistresses_ lookin' forward t' publishin' their tell-all books about him, if th' news' t' be believed."

Straight-faced, Heavy shrugged and said, "I vould say, vife did not lose anything vith him gone, either." He and Sniper snickered, and clinked their beer bottles together.

After opening their third and final bottles, Sniper said, "Th' _really_ awkward part for me wos havin' t' guide th' other blokes back t' th' city 'cause they didn't know how t' go back. They were like chickens with their heads cut off. They wouldn't let me call th' authorities or his wife. On top of wot th' billionaire already paid for my fee, they made me accept a … generous extra an' promised t' leave me an' me parents alone if I kept mum about it all. They said they'd handle th' press an' pass it off as a nasty car accident. An' they did."

"Money has much power."

"Yeah." Sniper angled his head and looked at Heavy. "Th' whole time they were yabberin' about their _wealth_ an' how _excited_ they were t' kill some wild animals _I_ had t' track for them, all I could think wos how good it'd feel t' shoot _their_ heads."

"That is how you become sniper?"

Heavy perked up as Sniper removed his aviator glasses to wipe them with the cloth of his tank top. It was the first time Heavy had seen Sniper's eyes, and in the midday light, they were a vibrant blue, shaped like a feline's and framed with thick, dark lashes. He would be lying if he said Sniper's eyes weren't striking. It was a pity Sniper always shielded them from sight. Perhaps the glasses really _was_ a shield, screening Sniper's emotions from the rest of the world.

"I guess. Didn't think I wos cut out for it at first, though. Shootin' a person s'not th' same as shootin' an animal. But holy _dooley_, once th' jobs came rollin' in an' it became so obvious that everyone, th' targets _an'_ th' people who want them dead, wos _guilty_ of some seriously fucked up bizzo one way or another …" Sniper donned his glasses again. "Feels like doin' a _favor_ for th' world, gettin' rid a' these people."

Heavy grunted, a non-committal sound. Sniper's rationalization of his occupation was thought-provoking. Was a death sentence acceptable if it was for a person judged as evil, a person who'd perpetrated evil deeds? Who would have the authority to pass that judgment in the first place? The judge and jury in a court of law, who were all human and flawed? The nation, also all human and flawed? The victims of the person judged as evil? The assassin with the high-powered rifle, hired by those who'd been wronged by the target?

If the answer to the first question was yes, did that mean his slaying of those Gulag soldiers and guard dogs in Dolinka Village was acceptable? _Righteous_?

Heavy's brain said yes. His heart replied something else entirely.

"When RED approached me in Melbourne for th' job here, that's wot they said t' me. That I was doin' th' world a favor." Heavy sent Sniper a sharp glance, and Sniper said, "They said they knew every job I'd taken, knew th' details a' every single one, an' that my talents were _wasted_ there. An' th' _money_ wos …" Sniper shrugged. "Wot can I say? It'll ensure Mum an' Dad will live comfortably for th' rest a' their lives."

Heavy smiled warmly.

"You love parents very much."

Sniper smiled as well.

"I do. I call them whenever I can. Mum keeps me up t' date with everythin' an' still talks t' me, but Dad …" Sniper's expression fell. "Let's just say he doesn't _approve_ a' my choice a' work." He scratched at his collarbone above the collar of his tank top and stared at a spot on the ground near their feet for a few seconds, then glanced at Heavy. "I'm a little _envious_ a' Demo 'cause a' that, ya know? His parents fully support wot he does. At least, s'wot he _claimed_."

Heavy gazed back at the other man, mutely. He sensed that something was weighing on Sniper's mind.

"Between you an' me … I don't think Demo tells th' truth most a' th' time. I don't think Demo even _knows_ it."

Heavy's eyebrows rose with inquisitiveness.

"Vhat do you mean?"

Sniper sat higher up on the lawn chair so they were eye to eye.

"Well, last week, we were havin' a drink an' chat, an' he said somethin' about stayin' at a boardin' school as a teenager."

"You mean, school for orphans?"

"No, no, not that Crypt Grammar School place. Though I'd bet _that_ place isn't real either," Sniper said, waving one hand. "Wos a different school. Looked like he regretted sayin' its name an' where it wos in Scotland. But he did, an' I remembered it an' asked Spy about it later."

Although Heavy didn't indicate it in his demeanor, he was intrigued by Sniper's nonchalant mention of Spy. Whatever had gone down between the two men almost two weeks ago must have been resolved, enough that they were on cordial terms with each other.

"Vhat did Spy say?"

"Spy said there wos no boardin' school in Scotland with that name." Sniper grimaced. "But there's a _mental asylum_ where Demo claimed th' school wos. Same name too. Been there for a _century_."

Heavy's eyebrows rose even more.

"How Spy know this?"

Sniper let out a derisive snort and made a face that amused Heavy.

"He said there wos some 'beautiful _goddess_ of a Scottish lass' _years_ ago who had th' hots for him an' wanted him t' marry her an' live in a castle an' all that bulldust. Said her _mum_ ended up in that asylum. He went there with her once, an' he wos _sure_ it wos no boardin' school."

For a minute, Heavy didn't know what to say. He'd been suspicious of Demo's life story since he heard it, but as he knew very little of Scotland and its people and culture, he gave Demo the benefit of the doubt. As implausible as it seemed, perhaps there _was_ a Highland Demolition clan that specialized in manufacturing and detonating explosives and had their distinctive child-rearing traditions. Perhaps Demo really had involuntarily killed his adoptive parents with bombs along the shore of the Loch Ness when he was a boy. Adoptive parents who, for all Heavy knew, might have been conjured up by Demo's imagination instead.

Perhaps the people he killed were his _actual_ parents.

And perhaps it was why Demo might have lived in a mental asylum for who knew how long, and fabricated such outlandish tales about his past and fostered such illogical animosity for an imaginary water beast.

Who wanted to suffer every moment of their lives sober and excruciatingly aware that they'd murdered their mother and father as a child?

"Bednaya dusha," Heavy murmured to himself. Then, to Sniper, he said, "You are vorried our bomb expert is alcoholic _and_ mentally ill?"

"He already blew me up once. Don't think it can get worse than _that_. I mean, who are _we_ t' judge somebody for mental illness, yeah?" Sniper replied, his tone compassionate. "Dad thinks _I'm_ mentally ill 'cause a' what I do, an' I don't think I am."

Heavy made another non-committal noise between his lips. If Sniper was mentally ill, then so was he. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders definitely asserted that, last he checked in 1963 when he accompanied Mary-Louise and her four young children to a bookstore in Baltimore. Mary-Louise was still grieving over Johnny's passing, and the children constantly stayed close to him, keeping him within eyesight, hanging onto his hands as if doing so meant he would never leave them. He, too, was still grieving for his lost friend, _brother_, and did not let go either. It was when he came across the DSM on the shelf that his attention momentarily left the kids. The brown leather-bound book was hefty, its black words stark upon bone-white pages, and Heavy's fingers had quivered with soundless anger as he glowered at the entry on sexual deviation.

The book had not only pronounced homosexuality as a 'pathologic behavior' – a _disease_ – it had also lumped it with sexual sadism and pedophilia. _Pedophilia_!

He would rather cease his own life than hurt a strand of hair upon the heads of Johnny's precious children, or any other children.

He was oblivious of his hands reducing the book to a trashed ball of paper until little five-year-old Tara, Johnny's youngest, tugged his pants and said, "Uncle B.? You can't read the book anymore. It's squished."

Derr'mo, how chagrined he'd been that he had to reimburse the bookstore for the _garbage_!

"An' anyway, there's Respawn. Demo could blow us up all he wanted, we'll just keep comin' back, good as new," Sniper added, and Heavy nodded in concurrence.

Then, Heavy asked, "Vhat happened that day, vith Demo?"

Sniper immediately knew what he was alluding to and pressed one hand against a high forehead, smiling from embarrassment. It made the Australian man appear adolescent.

"_That_ wos really unprofessional an' impolite a' me. Demo didn't deserve it. I made amends with Demo that night, but yeah, I'm still ashamed about it. It _did_ hurt like hell when th' bomb exploded and I _wos_ mad as a cut snake, but it wosn't Demo I wos really mad at. Th' night before, Spy came over t' th' camper an' –" Sniper pursed his lips. Hard. Then with a much too blasé voice, he said, "Ah, he just did somethin' that made me mad, that's all. It's been … dealt with. Yeah."

If it'd been anatomically possible, Heavy's eyebrows would be at his non-existent hairline now. Spy visited Sniper at his camper? At _night_?

Heavy didn't remark on this newfound tidbit of information. He could almost _hear_ the walls within Sniper erecting themselves again, blocking Heavy and the world out, towing their master back into their sanctuary. Sniper didn't say anything else or look at him, and Heavy took this to be the conclusion of their conversation.

"Ah. That is good, then." He picked up the empty bottles and slotted them back into their cupboard casing in which he'd carried them, then stood up. "I think I vill go see vhat Doktor is doing."

He last saw Medic in the dining hall at breakfast, about five hours ago, and the Infirmary was just minutes away by foot. But already, he missed Medic. He'd missed Medic from the second they left the dining hall and parted ways.

"You an' th' Doc, you're close."

Sniper was gazing at his face now, expression placid.

Heavy returned the gaze and said, "Da. Doktor is …"

_The man who made my heart beat again. The man who made my heart believe again. The man I love, with all of that heart._

"Doktor is very important person," he murmured, and it seemed an adequate answer for Sniper who sent him a small, cryptic smile, a smile that made him muse about just how much Sniper saw behind those tinted aviator glasses.

Sniper opened his mouth as if to say something, but shut it again, frowning to himself. Heavy took a wild guess what Sniper was trying to convey to him, and reached down to give Sniper's left shoulder an amiable squeeze.

"Vas good chat. Ve have drink and talk again soon, da?"

Sniper's smile was a grateful one.

"Yeah ... It _wos_ nice." Then Sniper's lip curled, an expression of disgust aimed at himself. "God, s'wos just _me_ yabberin' on an' on, wosn't it?"

Heavy chortled good-humoredly and replied, "That vhy ve have talk again," and Sniper smiled once more.

"Thanks again for th' beer. Have a g'day, mate."

"Da. Good day," Heavy said, also smiling, delighted to have made a new friend.

After throwing away the empty beer bottles down the kitchen garbage chute, he headed for the Infirmary and found Medic busy with paperwork in the office, scowling and muttering to himself in German every so often as he wrote industriously on the lined pages of a maroon-colored journal. Heavy longed to stroke away the groove between Medic's eyebrows, to smooth the lines of irritation from Medic's forehead with his lips.

He rapped the open office door twice with his knuckles.

"Doktor, you are fre–"

"Nein, _nein_! Go avay! I must write zhis down before I forget!" Medic exclaimed without lifting his head, shooing him away with the flapping of one hand.

Heavy felt like a man who'd just been kicked in the throat.

"Oh. I vill go then –"

"Heavy?"

It was the gentleness of Medic's voice that swiveled him around to face Medic again. Medic was sitting upright now, his fountain pen on its side next to the open journal on the desk, and his expression was … Heavy couldn't quite pin it down, but seeing it caused his chest to swell with something marvelous.

"Oh, I did not know it vas you, Heavy. Vhat is it?"

Heavy was tempted to request that Medic let him loiter in the office, except he had no idea what to do if Medic did. Well, no idea what to do that didn't include sitting in one spot and observing Medic like the doves that resided in coops in another room in the Infirmary. There was no way he could pull that off without Medic thinking him creepy and –

Wait a minute. Medic chased him off because the doctor thought he was someone else. Did that mean Medic chased off everyone else aside from _him_?

The thought made Heavy's chest swell all the more.

"Is all right. Vas just seeing if you are free. Vill not disturb you and your vork."

Medic had his pen back in hand, his expression warm.

"If I can finish zhis by dinner, I vill play chess vith you zhis evening, ja?"

"Is a date," Heavy said, and his chest came close to bursting when Medic gave him a mock stern look and said affectionately, "Dummkopf."

Temporary insanity must have seized his brain, for he replied without thinking, "But I am _your_ dummkopf, da?"

With the sunlight cascading in through the windows behind Medic and Medic bowing his head to resume writing, Heavy could not tell whether Medic's face was flushed or not. Medic's amused smile, however, was evident as the sunshine, and Heavy couldn't stop himself from smiling too.

"Get me flowers, a bottle of Bordeaux Cabernet Sauvignon und a chateaubriand steak, zhen ve vill talk."

"Doktor, you are _expensive_ date –"

Heavy's jolly laughter echoed in the Infirmary as an accompaniment to the blunt thud of a book against the office door, lobbed in jest at him by Medic. As soon as he stepped out of the Infirmary, the sensation in his chest altered into a twinge that didn't go away even when he rubbed his chest with his palm. It was astounding, how a man could so intensely miss someone he just saw.

Moreover, where was he going to find _flowers_ in a desert like this?

The solution would come to him in the form of a restless, gangly Bostonian sprinter who ambushed him from above in the fort's courtyard with a strident, "_YOOOOO, _HEADS_ UUUUUPPP_!"

Since their third week at 2Fort, Scout would enthusiastically play-wrestle with him whenever they weren't fighting the BLU team, with the reasoning that it was beneficial practice of close combat for both of them. Heavy had to agree that Scout had a good point there. It was just that the odds were so _stacked_ against the younger, smaller man, and Scout didn't know – or at least, Heavy _suspected_ Scout didn't know – that he always controlled his punches, let them swing harmlessly inches past Scout, and exaggerated his responses to Scout's onslaught upon his person.

What Scout's fists lacked in brute strength, they compensated with speed. _Lots_ of speed.

"_YEEEEEAAAH!_ YOU'RE GETTIN' _DOMINATED_, CHUCKLEHEAD!"

Heavy laughed jauntily, spinning round and round on verdant ground as Scout latched onto his shoulders and delivered a flurry of punches onto his head and chest. It would upset Scout for sure if Scout knew _this_, but Heavy scarcely sensed them. His years of professional boxing had proven to him that the dense muscle and fat of his torso could tolerate an inhuman amount of impact. His head, he had toughened by smashing slabs of concrete on it, and his fists, by pummeling daily the coarse rock walls of the gold mines of his village since he was a boy and was trained by his father in brawling.

There wasn't much else to do up in the isolated mountains back then for children and teenagers, besides working together with their parents in the mines, playing games or being homeschooled. He was one of the favored few whose parents had tutored him to habitually read and write, whose parents would travel to the largest city in Khabarovsk Krai and bring back books and gifts for him. Reading had been a clandestine hobby, though it'd later unlock avenues in life that would be otherwise unavailable to him. He would always be indebted to his parents for teaching him the art of war and words to take care of himself.

"NOT SO TOUGH NOW, ARE YA, _ARE YA_?!"

Heavy laughed some more as Scout evaded his hands and then got him in a chokehold that was akin to a pair of twigs enclosing the trunk of an oak tree. Heavy lurched around like an intoxicated man, puffing out his cheeks, sticking his tongue out and crossing his eyes, and Scout hooted and tumbled to the ground with him, rolling away as he flopped onto his back and splayed his arms with a dramatic groan. Scout pounced on him in a tick and did his best to get him into a chokehold again, and Heavy thrashed about like a fish out of water, ever cautious of Scout's whereabouts, of not flattening the younger man with his bulk.

For this bout – like every other bout between them – Scout emerged the victor, smacking the top of Heavy's head when he bellowed, "YOU ARE UNCLE!"

"That's right!" Scout shouted, grabbing his head with both hands and shaking it to and fro. "And what have we learned today? I _always_ win! _SAY IT_!"

"Schout alvhaysh vhins!" Heavy said as clearly as could with his cheeks and lips squashed by Scout's hands, and Scout released him and let him fall back onto the ground, grinning smugly while straddling his midriff.

"That's _right_! And don't ya forget it! Woohoo_hoo_!"

He smiled to himself after Scout leapt off him, then peeled open one eye to watch Scout dash up and down the green inclines of the courtyard, fueled with the energy of the young. Play-wrestling with Scout reminded him of the fondest days of his childhood. He'd been one of just six children in the village. The other five were girls who never hesitated to play with him, play games like Cat and Mice, in which he was always the cat who chased them, and Cossacks and Robbers, in which he would be partnered with one girl while the rest formed a team due to his massive size and strength. Even so, the girls were robust and plucky, laudable opponents who made it quite an effort for him to win. It also made the games exhilarating and frosty, work-free winter days bearable, and taught him to respect the female side of the human species. A well-aimed knee to the groin during a game had a tendency to do that.

As luck would have it, the same girl who kneed him – a sunny, rosy-cheeked ten-year-old with light brown hair and hazel eyes – gave him his first kiss when he was nine.

In the same week, he caught himself ogling her eighteen-year-old, muscular, dark-haired brother after a day's work in the mines, and realized he would never be like other boys and men.

"You remind me a' my oldest brother," Scout said as he continued to run and spring about, and Heavy blinked the past away from his eyes.

"Vhat is he like?" Heavy asked, sprawled on the shorn grass, crisscrossing his fingers on his belly.

"Jeb?" Scout executed a flawless long jump over Heavy and landed with poise several meters away. "He was a lot bigger than me, but still real skinny compared to ya. I wrestled with him the most, outta my seven brothers, 'cause he was the biggest. I thought, if I could beat _him_, I could beat _all _a' them, ya know?"

Heavy noted Scout's use of past tense.

"Da. Good plan."

"So, yeah, he got these _big_ hands like you too. He used to box our ears if he managed to catch us, 'specially if the rest a' us were late for dinner and Ma was yellin' for us to get our asses inside already. She'd yell at _him_ if we didn't, see, 'cause he's the oldest and he's s'pposed to keep an eye on us, so most times, he'd come after me 'cause I was the smallest and his arms were long enough to keep me outta reach whenever I wanted to punch and kick him."

Scout spoke like he ran. Sometimes it was difficult for Heavy to comprehend what Scout said, but this tranquil afternoon, without the clamor of a skirmish, with only the noises of Scout scurrying around and whooping now and then, Heavy had the time to untangle Scout's run-on sentences.

"You beat big brother, leetle Scout?"

Scout skidded to a halt near his head, then ambled in circles next to him, scuffing the grass with his shoes. Heavy couldn't see Scout's face, or his expression.

"Jeb left home years ago. Said it was gettin' too _small_ for him, that he was meant for bigger things. Bigger _cuts_. Didn't wanna be known as the head a' the Quinn Mad Dogs anymore. Was _ashamed_ a' us 'cause we weren't a _real_ gang or some shit. Told us to _end_ it." Scout suddenly kicked hard at the grass. "Like he was one to talk. He _started_ it. Then he _left_. Hadta go join the _Mullens_ and then get k–" Scout kicked again at the grass, harder still. "Fuck it. Ya don't leave _family_."

Heavy kept his eyes on Scout as the younger man sat down beside him, legs drawn up, elbows on knees and arms crossed. Reclined on the ground as he was, most of what he saw was Scout's back and the back of Scout's capped head.

"You and brothers vere street gang?"

Scout huffed a brief, low laugh that sounded far too old and bitter for a youth like him.

"Was just us Quinn brothers, but we were _somethin'_. We weren't the Mad Dogs for nothin'. Shit, Jeb caught the eye a' _McGonagle_, ya know?"

"McGonagle? I am not familiar," Heavy said, and Scout glanced back at him with an expression of comical disbelief.

"Ya dunno who _Paulie McGonagle_ is? He's the head a' the Mullen Gang in South Boston!" Scout tilted his head to one side, eyeing him with a smile of incredulity. "Don'tcha have _gangs_ where ya come from?"

Heavy also smiled, although his was one of patience and worldly insight. Scout was young, very young compared to the rest of the team. Scout was almost _half_ his age. Twenty years old. In most states in the country, including Scout's home state of Massachusetts, it was still illegal for Scout to consume alcohol, and from what Scout had previously told him of his life in Boston, the young mercenary had never left the city until RED hired him.

To Scout, Boston was the center of the universe. Everything he knew, he'd acquired there. Everything he'd lived through, from birth till coming here to New Mexico, had transpired there. Everything that _mattered_ to him was there, and therefore, Heavy couldn't blame Scout for assuming that everyone should know what he knew about the place. There was so much of the world that Scout had yet to explore, to experience. So much to see, so much to do, to _learn_.

Once upon a time, his Siberian home village had been Heavy's center of the universe, too. But a great deal could change in thirty plus years. Now, his center of the universe was no longer a place. It was a person. A _very_ important person.

"Like, the _Mafia_ is Russian, right?" Scout said, and again, Heavy blinked, the vision of Medic at his desk waning away in the sunshine.

"Da. Mafia is of many gangs, with vory v zakone as leaders."

"Whazzat mean?"

"It mean thieves-in-law. Top criminals who join together under one set of rules, the Thieves' Code. Vory v zakone vas born in Gulag, vhen Stalin send criminals and political prisoners there."

"Like, the Mafia was set up there 'cause all the _crooks_ were there."

"Da."

Scout had turned around and was now facing him, rangy legs still drawn up, drumming his fingers on his knees.

"Ya said you were in this _goolag_ place."

Heavy had to consciously preserve his neutral countenance as he recollected the slur-ridden clash with Soldier that resulted in him blurting out that smidgen of info.

"I did."

"So … you Mafia?"

Scout's expression was of ingenuous curiosity.

"No. Vas there for … other reason. Did not join them."

"Oh." Scout began tapping his right foot on the ground. "Why not?"

Heavy almost shot the younger man a glance of surprise, but curbed himself in time. If Scout's oldest brother had established the Quinn Mad Dogs before Scout was born or when Scout was very young, gang life was all Scout knew. All the violence and power struggles, within the gang and without, and the conquests of territory in the gang's name would be so commonplace, taken for granted. In such a domain, a boy could never become a man unless he proved himself worthy of being in a gang. If a man wasn't a gangster, one who _owned_ the streets he walked, he was no man at all. To choose to _not_ become a member of one gang or another had to be a very alien notion to Scout.

"The Code did not allow helping or making friends vith prison vardens. I vanted to escape Gulag. I knew I need help from someone on other side to do that. Also, I did not agree vith Code. Did not vant to live criminal life. And …"

Heavy lapsed into silence, at a loss as to how to explain why the Gulag gangsters shunned him without divulging his sexuality to Scout. He'd been branded a _petukh_ from the beginning of his prison sentence, the lowest type of prisoner in the system that was unremittingly subjected to degrading acts by other prisoners. A _petukh_ couldn't touch or talk to non-_petukhi_ prisoners, and was saddled with the worst section of a prison cell. A _petukh_'s status was a lifelong one. If a _petukh_ did not inform other prisoners of his status, the punishment for it was a vicious beating. Even death.

The irony of his statement to Soldier about his fat belly was, it did save him from dying in the Gulag but not in the way everyone had assumed. His big belly, big body, big arms and hands, big _everything_ had combined into an extremely convincing facade of a man who probably battered _petukhi_ prisoners to death for fun and had an incalculable number of women as notches on his bedpost. Despite his _petukh_ label, many of the other prisoners kept a prudent distance from him, fear tangible in their eyes. When the _vory_ confronted him for the first time, they'd laughed till their sides hurt, unable to accept that he was a homosexual, the way he appeared and behaved. They figured the wardens got it really wrong this time, and even made an exceptional offer of membership to 'correct' his _petukh_ status.

He declined.

Several days later, they'd retaliated with the order of a sexual assault on him by a dozen prisoners. After the thirty second-long scuffle in his cell, not one of those prisoners were capable of twitching a toe, much less crawl away to report to their masters. He was utterly unscathed, save for the dark red wetness that coated his hands and forearms. Five wardens armed with rifles had to guard him in a solitary cell while other wardens hauled out twelve destroyed, blood-spattered bodies to the infirmary. Or to be buried. The wardens then succeeded in doing what the _vory_ couldn't, marring his face and body with contusions and cuts as they hammered him with their rifles. A warning, the first and final one.

The gangs never bothered him again. Only the most desperate and foolish prisoners persisted in attacking him after that, throughout the three months he was in the Gulag, and they were foul enough.

"And they were _scared_ a' ya, huh?"

Heavy was torn between sighing in relief and shutting his eyes. Either one would have let Scout on that he was withholding something, so he did neither and stared up at the pellucid sky with a mild smirk.

"Yeah. Ya don't need a gang. You're like a whole gang in _one_, man." When Heavy looked at him and slanted one eyebrow, Scout said, "'Ey, I've been fightin' together with ya for weeks now. I've seen your _handiwork_, 'kay? I saw ya punch BLU's Spy's head clean offa his shoulders after he stabbed Medic with that knife last week!"

For a tenth of a second, Heavy considered denying it. It'd been a one-off occurrence, something that happened so _fast _that it was over long before he realized it, a _blank_ in his memory. He only remembered the moments of before and after, of Medic spasming and howling in pain when the BLU Spy shoved the blade of a Balisong into his right flank, then of Medic in his arms, unconscious and bleeding, and BLU Spy's decapitated body on the ground in front of him, evaporating in a mist of blue as BLU's Respawn system removed the corpse from the arena.

And why _did_ BLU have a Respawn system just like theirs, when RED and BLU were enemies? Did BLU steal the technology from RED? Or was it the other way around?

"Okay, I did that. But! Did not mean to."

Scout grunted and said, "Yo, you forgettin' somethin', pancakes? We _are_ s'pposed to kill them! You've probably killed them all a _bazillion_ times with that _gun_ a' yours!"

Heavy grimaced a tad.

"No, vhat I mean vas, I do not like killing like that."

Scout's right foot went motionless. Scout studied his face for a minute, big blue eyes focused and astute. Unafraid.

"You've killed _lotsa_ people that way, huh?" Scout murmured.

"Is not first time, da. But I am not sure if it is 'lots'," Heavy answered truthfully, his eyes half-closed. "Escape from Gulag is ... blurry memory. I remember some things, but not all of it."

Scout bowed his head and picked at the grass between them, quiet in rumination. Then, still staring down at the grass, he said, "It's kinda funny. What we do here. It's like, it's a _game_ or somethin'. Nobody really dies. Ya kill them, and they just keep comin' back. Ya get killed, and you keep comin' back to life too. Maybe that's why I ain't freaked out about killin' the BLU team. Or about them killin' me. Feels like none a' it's _real_, sometimes. Like a _blurry memory_, like ya said."

"Hmm."

"Sometimes … I wonder if Jeb killed anybody. When he joined the Mullens." Scout paused, then muttered, "He used to come home to see Ma and Pop every weekend. Give them _money_, or whatever. Pop couldn't work anymore after his arm got crushed in that factory accident. Always got so _pissed off_ when I saw Jeb's face, 'cause he'd lay it into me first thing, call me a _runt _and laugh and tell me I shouldn't bother joinin' any gangs 'cause I'd be fuckin' _useless_. Told me I should just stay _home_ like a good, little _boy_ and do what Ma says, get a _desk_ job and live some _boring_, _sucky_ life. Every single _time_." He started tapping both feet in tandem, as if he was itching to run, run as far away as he could from those damning words. "He oughta see me _now_. I've fought and killed more guys, made more money than he _ever_ would. I ain't a runt. I ain't useless."

The bill of Scout's cap cloaked his face from view, but Heavy would have to be deaf to not hear the resentment in Scout's voice, the _disappointment_ of being unvalued by his oldest brother. A brother he must have respected and loved very much, to be this wounded by said brother's betrayal. _If_ it really was a betrayal as perceived by Scout. As Scout described his last interactions with his brother, Jeb hadn't come across as a spiteful bully to Heavy. In his mind's eye, he saw instead a man apprehensive for his family, a man who'd regretted enmeshing his brothers into gang life but couldn't free himself from it. A man who'd hoped that his youngest brother would not follow in his footsteps to an early grave, that abrasive words alone would goad him away from that road.

What _would_ Jeb Quinn say, if he could see his little brother now?

"You are not useless," Heavy murmured. "Sometimes, people say one thing but mean another. Sometimes, they try to reach someone, to _save_ them, but do not know how."

Yet again, Scout's feet became motionless. Scout peered at him from underneath the bill of his cap, brows creased, those big eyes abruptly so childlike. Heavy peered back, his eyes kind. Scout swiftly went back to staring and picking at the grass, his frown morphing into a bemused expression as he digested Heavy's reflections about his brother, and Heavy remained silent. He knew when to retreat, when to give someone space to organize their thoughts. To see things in a new light.

Three minutes passed before Scout asked, "You lived through the Great Depression, right?"

Heavy propelled himself up onto his elbows and then sat up, his eyes squinting up at lenticular clouds taking shape in the sky. He could see irisation along the rims of the clouds, shimmery belts of mother-of-pearl caused by sunlight diffracting through the clouds. They were spectacular.

"Vas born in 1922. Live through Great Depression vhen I vas child in Russia."

Scout gazed up at the sky with him, legs now flat on the ground, hands propped on knees.

"Did ya join RED for the money too?"

"Da. It vas offer to not refuse."

"Yeah. A _million _smackeroos, pally!"

Heavy's lips arced up when Scout began tapping his feet against each other. There was something humorous to him about the younger mercenary's hyperactivity, or rather, Scout's unawareness of it. It seemed Scout couldn't stick to one location without repetitively moving one limb or more, like he'd explode into a column of perpetual energy if he didn't do it within a specific number of minutes. Or _seconds_, even.

"Vhy you ask about Great Depression?"

"I was just wonderin'. Ma and Pop lived through the Great Depression too. Got married when it was at its worst. Jeb was the only one who knew what it was like, 'cause the rest a' us were born after it was over. Ma told me that a lotta days, she and Pop had to live on one bowl a' watery soup a day, and that was after they worked all day, six days a week. Sundays don't count 'cause they gotta go to church. She said, one time, Pop was so skinny, she could count all his ribs just by lookin' at him. Ya know?"

"I know. In Gulag, get one piece of bread vith mold and bowl of soup each day. Must fight for it, or you die hungry."

"Man. Life fuckin' _sucked_ back then."

Heavy shrugged, then replied, "It vas bad, but not alvays. Bad times do not last forever."

"The good times don't either, 'less you're damn _rich_."

"Is true."

"Yeah. A million bucks. That'll keep the good times going for Ma and Pop." Heavy glanced at Scout in time to see Scout nod sagely to himself, eyes narrowed with resolution. "_Yeah_. Ma and Pop, and Mikey and Jeff, Danny, Kev, Tony and Ricky … we'll never starve again. Never gotta wonder when the next meal comes. Never gotta work our asses off again for shit pay, and Pop can get that _operation_ for his arm and we can fix the _roof_ and get some good _heatin'_ for once durin' winter. We'd be _free_, man."

Heavy sent Scout a benevolent smile. Sitting side by side as they were, the dissimilarities of their bodies and facial features couldn't be more apparent, and yet, once stripped of their skin, their accents and nationalities, they were the same. They had positive and negative memories of their past. They had parents, family, and abundant love for them. They had dreams for the future, for a better world. They were people, just people, trying to find their place in the universe.

"And vhat about Quinn Mad Dogs?" Heavy murmured. "Vith so much money, do not need gang anymore, da?"

Scout was quiet for a very long time, frozen in place, staring forward blindly.

"I was the one who found Jeb at our front door that night. He was beaten so bad, he was slidin' on his belly on the sidewalk for a block 'fore he reached home. I saw the blood." Scout's voice was monotone. Hollow. "Ma couldn't stop screamin' when Danny and Mikey carried Jeb in. She thought he was already dead, but he was still breathin' and when Tony called for an ambulance, they said it'd take them ten minutes to get to the house and I just ran outta the house with a baseball bat and kept running. Just ran and ran till I got to the nearest hospital and grabbed the first doctor I saw and made him drive back home to help Jeb.

"The ambulance still hadn't arrived. Jeb's eyes were open. He couldn't talk but he kept lookin' at me like he wanted to say somethin', and then a whole lotta blood poured outta his mouth and the doc said he was dead. Nothin' he coulda done 'cause Jeb's rib went into his lung and his head was like a cracked egg. And that was the first time I saw Pop cry."

Heavy had to clamp his hands together to not give the younger man a consoling clasp. Scout would not appreciate such gestures, he knew.

"Some bastards from the gang came to the funeral. Went up to Pop, said they were sorry, that they'd avenge Jeb, gave him some money in an envelope like it could replace Jeb. Pop threw it in their faces and told them to get the fuck out, and they took it back and said Jeb was never really one a' them anyway. Just a dog who thought he could be a lion. After that, me and my brothers, we swore we'd stick together no matter what. Only gang we needed was each other. We didn't need the Mullens or the Killeens or whoever the hell else wanted to run the streets. We saw what Jeb's death did to Ma and Pop." Scout's voice plummeted to a whisper. "He didn't deserve to die like that. Nobody did."

"I am sorry, Scout."

Scout's back was ramrod straight, his hands pressed upon his thighs, but when Heavy saw Scout's visage, the expression engraved on it wasn't rage. It was profound remorse, and it pared away the veneer of youth to reveal a man already timeworn and weary, a _man_ with the courage to speak his heart. The dampness in Scout's eyes did nothing to lessen that courage.

Many minutes later, Scout murmured, "Hey, Heavy … ya think Jeb would be proud a' me today?"

Scout's voice had reverted to a semblance of its usual tenor.

"I think he alvays vas," Heavy said, and Scout looked at him and smiled sideways, and the Earth rotated on its axis once again.

At that instant, Heavy heard a coo, then felt the air above his head swirl as something pintsized and feathery flew past. It was a pure-white dove, one of Medic's pet birds. Whether it was Archimedes after a bath, or one of the other doves, Heavy couldn't determine. They all appeared the same to him.

At that instant, Heavy also recalled his current dilemma, and asked with a self-conscious smile, "Scout … you, _uhm_, know vhere to find _flowers_?"

After their lugubrious conversation, Heavy welcomed the comical look of perplexity that contorted Scout's features.

"_Huh_? Whaddaya want _flowers_ for?"

Scout obviously didn't believe his fib of requiring flowers to cook some little-known Russian dish. Thankfully, Scout did not call him out on it and led him to a secluded area at the back of the base, to the right side of the garage fringed by a rickety wooden fence. There, in the corner between the garage and fence, was a shrub of pale lavender blossoms, half a meter tall and wide. Its leaves were toothed, dark green and downy on both sides. Up close, Heavy saw that the flowers were in head-like clusters, more bright pink to magenta and had heart-shaped petals. Some of them were bleaching to blue.

"So? _This_ what ya lookin' for?" Scout asked, hands on hips, one eyebrow quirked.

Heavy harvested a bouquet of the flowers and grasped their square, downy stems in his left hand, his eyes crinkled with contentment as he envisaged Medic's reaction to the flowers. Now he just had to review the fridge inventory for red wine and tenderloin steak.

"Da. Is just vhat I am looking for. Thank you."

Heavy snickered when Scout, true to form, dove for the flowers in his hand in a frisky ambush, and they shouted and wrestled over the flowers all the way back into the fort, so much that a grime-smeared Engineer peeked out of the half-open door of his workshop as they passed by. When Heavy invited Engineer for a drink in the rec room later, the smiling Texan had to turn down the offer.

"Sorry, Slim, gotta take a rain check this time. Some of my Sentry Guns need lotsa repairin' and it can't wait."

"Is fine, Tall Man," Heavy replied, smiling at Engineer's nickname for him. "Another day."

Engineer's smile broadened. Then he pointed at the flowers in Heavy's hand and said, "You thinkin' of _sprucin'_ up yer room with them _flowers_?"

Heavy glanced at the flowers, his smile becoming one of bashfulness. Scout had accepted his fib, but Engineer, who had _eleven_ Ph.D. degrees to his name, would certainly doubt it or worse, inquire about the recipe and whether he was going to cook dinner tonight or not! And with Scout present –

"Uh …" Heavy said, glancing around, his shoulders slumped with relief that Scout had run off somewhere already and left him alone with Engineer. "Da! Sprucing up room."

"I didn't know you were into interior decoratin'," Engineer joked, and Heavy grinned and replied, "Do not be fooled, I am man of hard and soft sides!"

Both of them chuckled and then waved farewell at each other, Engineer slipping back into his workshop and Heavy strolling onwards to his room in the living quarters. He had to find a vase for the flowers, or at least a bowl until he gave them to Medic after dinner, and if they withered before then, there were more where they came from. A Sandvich would be a nice reward for Scout, whom he knew was as fanatical about them as he was.

As he passed Engineer's room beside the workshop, the muffled, erratic muttering of a man floated to his ears. His steps slowed as his eyes fell on the door of the next room. It was open with the tiniest of gaps. Heavy tiptoed to it, then leaned as near to the gap as he could.

"… they need to _get_ with the program already! _All_ of them! Dishonorable numbnuts … especially that _fatass Sputnik_ and that _Fritz geezer_!"

Heavy flinched from the door, scowling, his canines bared. This was _Soldier's_ room. Who was Soldier speaking to in there about him and Medic?

"Our Stars and Stripes beat their dumb Hammer and Sickle and _Swastika_ any day! Goddamn maggoty _Commie_ and _Nazi_ … they're _dishonoring_ this unit, I tell you. Them and that _French fry_ and the _kangaroo_ and that one-eyed _cross-dresser_ and that freaky, red fire-retardant _thing_!"

Heavy's scowl turned into an expression of forbearance, and he rolled his eyes, feeling exasperation _and_ pity for the American mercenary. What a minuscule, lonely world Soldier must live in, to mistrust anyone and anything that didn't measure up to his xenophobic principles –

"It's just you and me, Shovel … you and me. _You'll_ never fail me. I _know_ you won't … that's right … now _that's_ what I wanna see … _yeah_ …"

There was the sound of clothes rustling, of Soldier's breaths hastening, of something _gooey_ being squirted out of a tube, and Heavy took his cue to hightail it like a bat out of hell, clutching the desert flowers to his chest, his face in a rictus of horror. Oh, _govno_, Soldier was talking to his _shovel_ the entire time and then Soldier was _taking off_ his _clothes_ and then he was … _he was_ –

Seconds after the door of his own room slammed shut behind him, Heavy bent forward and laughed heartily, slapping his right hand on one knee. Oh, this day was just getting better and _better_! Did anyone else know about Soldier's … _predilections_? It was one thing for a man to feel romantic and/or sexual feelings for another man or woman, but something truly _different_ for a man to feel those feelings for an _inanimate object_. A _shovel_, no less!

Heavy's hilarity dampened when his eyes flitted to his Minigun on the table. He sauntered to it and laid his right hand on Sasha's barrel cluster, shaking his head, his smile gone abashed. He didn't care for Sasha as much as he would a living human being, but still … he had _named_ Sasha. Named and deemed Sasha _male_. Devoutly cleaned and maintained him, and blown a gasket more than once whenever someone touched Sasha without his explicit permission. Was he really more decent than Soldier?

"At least I do not have sex vith you, Sasha," he murmured, and laughed inaudibly at the unbidden imagery of Soldier humping his shovel on a bed. He'd never see Soldier's shovel the same way again. And wait till he told Medic about it!

Three hours later, after a brisk shower, obtaining a bowl of water for the flowers and then a rummage through the kitchen's enormous refrigerator that yielded several bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon – Beaulieu, from California – and dozens of pieces of raw steak ready to be roasted, Heavy sat alone in the dining hall, munching on his last Sandvich of the night. The sole person to join him for dinner earlier was Sniper who showed up in his typical red shirt and brown khakis, fresh out of a shower. Sniper opted for some hand-sized, beef-and-cheese meat pies that he shared with Heavy, and left after a fleeting chat about food and the iconic status of meat pies in Australia. Having eaten two of Sniper's five pies, Heavy had to concur that Australian meat pies were indeed scrumptious and worthy of their reputation. Sniper should order more on their next inventory update with RED.

With the kitchen to himself after dinner, Heavy was easygoing with his cookery of Medic's repast: Roasted beef tenderloin with shallot and wine sauce, and some sliced, sautéed potatoes on the side. He prepared raw ingredients for more than one person in the event other team members came in, but no one did even as he was arranging Medic's meal and glass of wine on a silver tray for transportation to the Infirmary. They were all probably making the most of their day off. Heavy sniggered to himself as he imagined again Soldier in coitus with his shovel. He hoped Medic would laugh after hearing about Soldier's antics. It made him happy to hear Medic laugh.

He stopped by his room to get the flowers, then walked to the Infirmary. Upon entering it, he saw that only the automatic ceiling lights were on, that the office door was open and the office was dim inside.

"Doktor?"

The desk lamp was switched on, casting a warm, golden glow on a sleeping Medic whose head was resting on crossed arms on the desk. Medic had shed his coat and hung it over the back of his cushioned chair. Medic's head was turned to the side, towards the light, and Heavy had an unhindered view of Medic's face as he set the tray on the desk.

The angles and lines of Medic's face were tempered by the illumination, decades erased away. Medic's eyelashes were more noticeable, long and dark fans of fine hair upon high cheeks, and Medic's lips were parted, appearing fuller and softer in repose. Medic's hair was tousled, as if he'd raked his fingers through it, and _ah_, the _temptation_ Heavy felt to do the same!

Heavy sighed, fidgeting his fingers as he stood beside the desk and gazed down at Medic. Medic's hair was a lustrous dark brown in the light. So copious and _glossy_. How _handsome_ Medic must have been in his younger years.

"One touch … just one," Heavy murmured to himself, biting his lower lip.

His right hand seemed to move on its own accord towards Medic's hair, fingers straightened and trembling oh so slightly. Just an inch away from contact, Heavy snatched his hand back, lucidity ice-cold and sobering to his senses. What was he _doing_? What if Medic _woke up_ as he caressed Medic's hair?

He glanced at the steak, wine and flowers on the tray, and his chest constricted. What if Medic woke up and saw the meal and flowers and thought it was him making a _romantic overture_? What if Medic laughed at him for it? What if Medic _scorned_ him for it?

_And what if he doesn't? What if he cares even more for you?_

"Stop it, heart. Do not feed me such hope," Heavy whispered, his hands in fists at his sides, eyes helplessly homed in on Medic. "Doktor is heterosexual man."

_And how do you know that, exactly? _

Heavy had no answer to that, and his heart said nothing more, leaving him with his predicament. To touch, or not to touch? When would he have such a chance again?

Heavy's right hand moved towards Medic's hair a second time. A tremor zigzagged up his arm when his fingers finally grazed the dark locks, and his brain logged every sensation as he combed his fingers through them, as he outlined the rounded contour of Medic's head with his fingertips. Medic's hair was softer than he'd ever thought. Medic's head fit perfectly in the cusp of his hand. So much brilliance, so easily lost with one wrong word, one wrong move.

Heavy withdrew his hand with acute reluctance. It was better to have Medic simply as a friend than to not have Medic in his life at all, and if that meant stolen touches and glances, if that meant hiding behind jokes and laughing off any surmises about his intimacy with Medic, so be it. Wouldn't be the first time he had to do all that. Not even close.

But it _would_ be the first time he had to do all that about someone with whom he was head over heels in love.

Medic didn't stir when he took Medic's coat off the chair and swathed the slumbering doctor with it. Medic must have exhausted himself, to sleep so soundly.

"Spokoinoi nochi, obladatelʹ moyem serdtse," Heavy said, and after one last glance at Medic from the door, he departed from the office, the sensation in his chest alternating between heat and a chill as he wondered what tomorrow would bring him.

(To be continued ...)


End file.
